From Park City to Prague: Travel Book July-August 2016

In June of 2016, Marietta and I were planning what to pack as we prepared to leave on our next vacation. The first part would be spent in Park City, looking across the pond on our patio at the Deer Valley ski run, Big Stick and watching the Osprey fish, the paddle boarders float past us, the muskrat swimming at dusk and the ducks herding their babies back and forth among the ponds. All this while I would be editing my novel and outlining a new psychology book.I also planned to read some about Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer, Wagner and Freud, preparing for our pilgrimage to Europe. We were going to Munich, Cesky-Krumlov, Vienna, and Prague. My purpose for this trip was to understand evil. I want to comprehend how fear and hurt transform into anger and hate and then become a mass movement of evil like the world saw in the first half of the twentieth century when over 100,000,000 people were killed.Some of the same forces seem to be at play now. As we prepare to leave, we are witnessing the emergence of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for President and watching the British vote to leave the E.U. and a recent election in Austria where a radical anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-sematic candidate came within a hair of winning the election for the Austrian Presidency; and in the Philippines where Duterte, a strong man with a history of using goon squads to get his way, won the Presidency by campaigning against democracy.The belief that evil is an inevitable force represented by Satan, created by God to have a cosmic battle against the forces of Good represented by the Archangel Gabriel died with the Enlightenment. The kind of evil that I am interested in for this trip is not merely an impulsive act of one person's murder of another, although that is certainly evil. It is the murder of millions of people ostensibly justified by a flag, a culture or a widely-held belief. Such beliefs would include misogyny, racism, nationalism, and any wholesale entitlement that values one human's life and an individual's sacred right to choose above another's.Before the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, metaphysical versions of reality were sometimes used by various human cultures to subdue evil. But as often as not these constructions of God were used as justification for the perpetuation and the prosecution of evil. (See the wars that followed the Reformation, the Inquisition, and the Crusades).For many, science and the Enlightenment destroyed any metaphysical constraints, releasing humans from any reason to fear God. The Newtonian discovery of natural physical laws of nature suggested that there were also laws of human nature and that if we followed these laws in our behavior toward ourselves and others, we would develop a Utopia where evil would not exist. Before the Enlightenment people refrained from evil because of their fear of God. After the Enlightenment, many worried that there would be no reason for avoiding evil because there was no god to fear. Then some Enlightenment thinkers believed that if people conformed to Natural Human Laws that life would work better for them and everybody else. So instead of being afraid to do wrong, people would be naturally rewarded for doing right.These natural laws governing human conduct would be secular and very akin to a Confucian view of how society should operate. Diderot and others seemed to advocate for the science of human nature that would discover the proper prescriptions for human conduct, much as Confucius did centuries before in China.Rousseau and other Enlightenment thinkers and other philosophers to follow quickly rejected this idea because such a science would mechanize the human spirit. And such a mechanistic human science would leave unanswered the question of why there is evil in the world. In medieval times people believed God created and controlled the universe and this battle between good and evil somehow followed God's purpose. With Newton, evil seems unnecessary. The universe follows laws and so too, presumably, does human nature.By discovering that nature followed laws, science weakened morality.Without God, many thought that we are left with man's understanding and power. Once, evil was explained by Adam's fall and the inner depravity of man. If human nature does not create evil and if we can find our natural human laws, why is there evil in human life? From where does it come? If morals are part of natural law, why isn't man moral? Is it the flaw of human customs? Is the science of humanity a search for these natural rules that will eliminate evil?Surely logic is not the answer, Rousseau contended. Logical determinism will destroy freedom of choice, spontaneity, play, creativity and the joy of discovery. Logic negated instinct. We need a free and active morality.But moral relativity had to stop somewhere. We have to find something solid and beneficial that is absolute beyond question. The problem is how can we be pragmatic, experimental, creative, free and authentic and have an ordered life.Moral relativity can quickly become a justification for evil. We must have some standard by which we can know right from wrong.Diderot and others maintain that all humans contain an internal sense of right from wrong at birth. Recent studies of mammals demonstrate that infants are born with a clear sense of fairness and a desire for order. I contend that human science and common sense reveal some naturally innate human qualities that form paradoxical polarities, appearing to be opposite and yet both true at the same time. There is the selfish desire to have, consume, and collect. This includes the desire for power, fame, wealth and sex.On the other end of this polarity is the equally strong desire to contribute, to help, to provide, to rescue, to nurture. Self-esteem, in part, comes from our belief that we can make and have made valuable contributions to the well-being of others. Self-aggrandizement vs. contributing to others.Second polarity is the desire to tell the truth, to be ourselves and express our authentic selves.This desire to freely express ourselves is opposed by our desire to find an audience who can accept us and consequently we must be willing to conform and adapt to be accepted. Expression vs. conformity.Third is our desire to pretend, play and create; to have fun and to extend ourselves merely for the joy of playing together with others.Opposing this natural desire to play is the desire to have responsibility, to perform an important function, to extend ourselves by serving the needs of others. Play vs. duty.There are surely more of these natural paradoxical human polarities. All of us tend more toward one side than the other in each of them. As a species we need people with different personalities to play different roles.In my view, there is no perfect natural way for people to be. There is, however, the human imperative to find a place or role where we can use our particular strengths and play a role that contributes to the common good.Part of how I see evil right now is that it is the outcome of people and society failing to find a place where people’s talents are used and appreciated. When people can’t find a way to contribute to the good, they feel shame. Their character flaws become exposed. And they defend themselves with evil behavior to avoid shame.I felt I needed to talk with other people about evil. To prepare for my pilgrimage, I met with my colleague consultation group, which consists of Leslie, Paul, Steve, Don and Connie. They are all experienced clinicians who have a specialized interest in family therapy and systems theory. I have great respect for their knowledge and wisdom. At each meeting, one person has the responsibility for presenting a problem or issue for which she or he would appreciate consultation and advice. Our meetings cover personal and professional issues. We laugh and cry together. I trust them implicitly.We sit together in a square on the two love seats, facing one another, one couch and two chairs facing the couch. Greta, my dog, moves among us, sometimes lying next to one of us on a couch, or sitting staring at the person who brought supper with them. Tonight all of us have a sandwich or a salad from Newks and Greta is moving from one of us to the other in search of a sucker who will give her food. And on this once-a-month Wednesday night, I was up and I told the group my plan to study evil on my trip to Europe, and I wanted them to share with me how their thoughts on evil."I don't believe in evil as a constant," Paul said. "I don't believe ‘evil lurks in the hearts of man' or in original sin. I certainly don't think that evil is God's punishment of man because of Adam's fall from grace. I agree with Voltaire. God is dead." Greta moved to Paul in hopes that while talking he might drop some food."So, you can't look at the Holocaust," Steve said. "and say you don't think evil exists?""Oh, I believe it exists," Paul said. "I just don't believe it is planted innately in humans.""Then where does it come from?" Leslie asked and ate a bite of her salad."I think it comes from society and the way our leaders organize our culture," Paul said. "I agree with Rousseau that natural man, man and woman, left alone by the morals and conventions of religion and government, would love one another and nurture new life. I think love and cooperation are natural to humans, not evil.""So evil comes from the church?" Connie asked."Yes," Paul said, putting his fork in his plastic salad container, "and from other institutions like schools and girl scouts and the tax system that serve the rich while oppressing the poor. It is the myths that society creates and perpetuates to repress and contain humans that cause evil.""I agree with that," Don said. Greta moved to Don now and put her chin on his knee. "I don't believe evil would exist if our social infrastructure encouraged equality and freedom and if everybody had food, shelter and good sex. Diderot, another Enlightenment figure, believed in the discovery of natural law for humans. If science could discover a way to use the law of gravity to allow a flowing stream to grind wheat, then we could discover the proper prescriptions for human conduct. Confucius recommended a series of specific detailed human behaviors and conventions centuries before the enlightenment and this ushered in China’s great age of innovation."“But I don’t agree that we can prescribe detailed social conventions like Confucius or Diderot,” Connie said. Greta now moved to place her chin on Connie’s knee. “Okay, science has made the notion of God less relevant. Once evil was explained by God and his fight with the devil but with God dead, what will eliminate evil? “This brings me back to sex.” She put her sandwich in her lap and Greta moved her nose close to the sandwich. Connie pushed Greta away and continued, “Women have been sexually repressed and controlled for centuries. In pre-historic times, when our species depended on women's fertility and their ability to procreate, women ran things. Gods were all female. Men were not essential. It was like a herd of deer. The female does are much more critical to the continuation of the herd than the male buck. Bucks are dispensable. One of them can make a lot of babies with little effort. Does, however, have the task of carrying, delivering, and tending the young and without good mothers, a deer herd would die. The same was true of a tribe in prehistoric times." Connie picked up her sandwich and took a bite."So, what does this have to do with evil?" I asked.Connie quickly swallowed and answered, "Then women were encouraged to be sexually active. They were not repressed or considered the property of men. In a tribe, babies from one woman may have several fathers."Once humans began to develop tools that required physical strength, axes, spears, and shovels, men began to be more critical to the species' survival, and tribes transformed from matriarchies to patriarchies.""The human female, the most sexually powerful mammal on earth, who can be sexually active twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, began to threaten men. So men placed shame on sex and women for enjoying sex and women became sexually repressed."So I agree that sexual repression of women causes evil. If men did not place on women the burden of shame around sex, men would not be so sexually starved. It is only in this century that in some cultures women are emerging from their sexual oppression, and I predict that once women can freely express their sexual desires, that there will be much less pent-up rage in men. It is this pent-up anger in men that is the source of evil.""I agree with the men being the source of evil," Leslie said sticking her fork in a large piece of tomato and leaving it there. "I disagree with Paul. I think we humans have an innate instinct that is the origin of evil. You can see it in the male ape. They have the instinct sexually to own all of the females in the ape clan. They will kill any other male ape who tries to get some from one of the female apes who he thinks belongs to him."One male doesn't have to hoard all the women. I'm pretty sure that some of the female apes would prefer a different male as their mate. But male apes are innately greedy.” Greta, tired of begging and being denied, came and laid at my feet."And human males are the same. There is one reason that ISIS and the Taliban are at war with the West, and that is we are messing with their pussy, telling women they can be educated and equal to men. Muslims teach women that they must dress and avoid contact with men, lest they provoke a male erection. Some Muslims even operate on their daughter's vagina at puberty to prevent girls from feeling sexual desire. Muslim women belong to their fathers, then to their husbands, and they are expected to be sexually available to their husband whenever he wants some. It is their primary job to satisfy and obey the men in their families.” She put her salad on the table next to the couch and leaned forward, elbows on knees."And here we go, messing with their women, telling them that they can think and choose for themselves. That's the reason they are chopping off the heads of Westerners and exploding themselves to bomb western targets for 80 virgins in heaven., as if the 80 virgins were property to be given to a man.“I agree with Rousseau that All people, men and women, are equal. Like Rousseau I don’t want a bunch of rules governing my every action. That’s what the Taliban try to do and look who that serves. It serves men, not women. That is evil.“Schopenhauer and Nietzsche laughed at the notion of an ordered moral world. They celebrated the human urge to ignore social constraints and to pursue the natural human impulses to consume sex, food, and attain wealth and power as part of man's nature. This striving must not be denied.“Nietzsche contended that humans developed beliefs to serve their purposes. All truth was relative. As Spinoza said, even the concept of evil is a human invention.“These Newtonian like standards of human conduct, if discovered, would demand conformity and condemn differentness."It is men's innate instinct to own and control as many women as they can, and that is evil and the source of wars. Sixty million refugees are displaced from their homes today because of this evil.""Leslie, you may have a point," Connie said wiping her mouth with her napkin, "but I don't like that word.""You mean ‘pussy,'" Leslie said picking up her salad from the table. "I've always had a gutter mouth, and that's the name crude, evil, stupid men use to refer to a vagina. That word doesn’t frighten me. Would you rather me use vagina?""Yes," Connie said. "If you must.""In a way, I agree with Leslie," Steve said putting his sandwich on the floor and taking a drink. "I think envy is the root of evil. And I also believe this is an innate human trait. Status, social class, the urge to be better-than, to want something someone else has, that’s where evil comes from."You might think that I am talking about competition or the competitive spirit. I'm not. Healthy competition motivates us to perform at our best. We can challenge one another to develop and improve a skill through competition.” Greta moved away from me toward Steve’s sandwich on the floor."Competition is a good thing so long as we celebrate one another's discovery of our best selves. But when we want what someone else has or to be someone else and have the honor, fame, status, wealth or prestige that they have, then we begin to plot to take away what they have, perhaps even destroy or kill them. That's evil.” Steve picked up his sandwich before Greta’s nose did more than sniff."This is the cause of war. The French and the Germans were fighting over the Alsace-Lorraine in Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II. Or more recently Russia invading Ukraine to control the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine. Or China threatening Japan and the U.S. over islands in the South China Sea. It's all envy.""Then how do you explain the Holocaust?" Leslie asked."It's the same,” Steve said taking another drink but keeping his sandwich in his lap this time. “The Europeans envied the extraordinary cultural achievements of the Jews. They envied their success, intelligence, and creativity. The Jews were dispersed all over Europe by the diaspora, and yet, they maintained their language, religion, and culture while, at the same time, adapting successfully to every new culture they encountered. Apparently, the Germans envied their wealth, their art, and their businesses, or else, they would not have stolen these things and murdered the Jews to eliminate them as competition.""Yes, yes," Don said. "I agree that envy causes evil, but I think competition is at the base of envy and evil. It is this constant comparing that we do with others. We do it unconsciously when we look at people's appearance or homes or cars. What does a new Mercedes Benz say or an 8,000-square foot MacMansion say, or an Armani suit say, or washboard abs say? They say the same thing. I am better than you.” Don stood, wadded his sandwich wrap and threw it into the wastebasket between the couch and the loveseat."This comparison and fear of being less-than frighten us, and we will do all kinds of evil as we compete to be superior. Wars are about our culture and proving that our way of life is better-than-yours. We judge other cultures and tell ourselves that we are doing them a favor by conquering, or "liberating" them."We may also be wanting their oil because, like Steve said, our competitive spirit becomes so toxic that we envy their oil reserves.""That makes some sense to me," Paul said. "I disagree that we have these ugly natural qualities in us that are the source of evil. Recent studies of mammals prove that mammals are social creatures who naturally promote the common good.” Greta sauntered over to the wastebasket and pulls out Don’s sandwich wrapper."What I resonate with that Steve and Don said, and Leslie too, has to do with scarcity. If we agree that sex is a commodity like food, as Leslie suggests, and that we all need our share of it, then I think the scarcity of sex and even more so food is the source of evil. I read an article in the New York Times that correlated war with famine and the point of the article was that hunger and the scarcity of food in some areas inevitably cause conflict over those scarce resources. And that where plenty of food exists, there is much less war and conflict.” The sounds of Greta’s licking and chewing the sandwich wrapper blended with Paul’s voice as he talked."There is nothing wrong with being hungry and wanting food. We can understand why someone would fight to feed their family. There is nothing wrong with wanting to share our passion and our bodies with another person. None of us have perfectly managed the desire that is essential to the survival of our species. When food or sex is scarce, we have trouble. Many see the problem as too many people and too few resources. There are many ways to solve the problem."There is something wrong with how we as a species distribute food and wealth that creates war. We produce enough food to feed all of us on the planet, but we allow cows to eat wheat so that people who want meat can have grain-fed beef. If we could all accept a vegetarian diet, the world would have plenty of food, and there would be no wars. It is simply a matter of changing habits.” Greta left the wrapped on the floor and returned to lay at my feet."Of if we could accept a taxation system that allowed a more equal distribution of wealth, we would not have war."Marx suggested this before me, and I think he's right.""That might work," Leslie said. "If people didn't lie. Now that I have given this more thought, I think mendacity is the source of evil. If we could live in a world where people were not afraid to tell the truth, there would be no evil. Repression, denial, sublimation all our defenses that we use to avoid just expressing what we feel and think. This distorts reality and denies us and others the ability to make informed choices."And I haven't even mentioned how our self-subterfuge distances us from healthy authentic self-expression. When we don't tell the truth because of fear or shame, we deny ourselves the chance to grow and learn. We don't get feedback about how we can develop aspects of ourselves that can contribute to our families and communities.”While Leslie talked, I stood, picked up Greta’s abandoned sandwich wrap and returned it to the wastebasket."Think about Tennessee William's play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Listen to Big Daddy yell, ‘Mendacity! I smell mendacity round here.’ And he did. Lies and deceit were everywhere around him. And he never knew that his homophobia was the cause of it all because his family was afraid to tell him."Or consider the lies and deception in Shakespeare's Othello and the misery that these lies created."To me, this is the source of evil.""In a way that makes sense to me too," Connie said. "The reason we lie is that we want to avoid shame. We lie because we are afraid of shame. Shame is toxic. It destroys self-esteem. Who wants to be authentic if it brings shame? To offer a gross example, there is nothing wrong with eating our own boogers. It is mucus that would have gone down our esophagus to our stomachs, that instead comes out our nose. An authentic person would have no trouble eating boogers, but most of us don't because doing that would bring us disapproval and shame. And shame hurts."Yes, lying is bad, perhaps the source of evil, but we all do it to avoid shame."And shame is an innate emotion. I think the story of Adam and Eve is a myth whose subject is shame. The original sin is to feel shame for who we are. If this feeling of shame is not innate in us, please tell me how I can purge shame.”“Now, you are grossing me out,” Leslie said. “talking about snot.”"Too much shame is toxic and evil," Paul said ignoring Leslie. "Shame piled on top of shame will drown us all and we will lie, cheat, steal and kill to avoid it. I agree with that. Shame itself is not the problem."It is how we process and use shame or don't use shame that's the problem. In my opinion, evil comes from avoiding shame. Facing shame and processing shame correctly is a great thing.” He combed his hand through his thick wavy hair."I believe shame is our best emotion. Yes, shame hurts. It gets our attention. It tells us that we must change, or we will continue to be hurt by shame. Shame gives us the motivation to learn, adapt and develop new skills. Shame is our teacher. It builds our soul and our character."Shame is also an essential element to love. What would love be if, when I hurt someone I love, I did not feel shame? I want to feel shame when I hurt my wife. I want to feel bad enough to find a better way to accomplish my desires without hurting her. That's part of love's definition."So, I don't think shame is the problem. I think too much shame is the problem and that avoiding shame's lessons is a problem. And I agree that lying to avoid shame can lead to much evil."Our conversation is too individually oriented for me,” I said, moving my feet and Greta moved toward Paul to avoid my feet, putting her chin on his knee as he ate his salad. “I understand how one individual may do harm and evil to another. What I don't get is how evil can be sold to masses of people. How is it that good people are persuaded to murder others whose only sin is that they have a different skin color or religious belief. How do individuals who become leaders convince people to put aside their consciences and become agents of evil? How do cultures and societies become so corrupt?"Hitler used the philosophies and ideas of Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to justify and encourage the evils of the Third Reich. He was able to capture the hearts and minds of most Germans so that they became war mongers and prosecuted genocide on millions of people."I want to know what human character flaw he used to insinuate his evil ideas into the minds and hearts of good people, people like you and me."I want to know what ideas Freud offered. He was right in the center of the German-speaking world as Hitler came to power. Austria was Hitler's first victim. I want to know how Dietrich Bonhoeffer characterized the events that surrounded his adult life and culminated eventually in his death on Hitler's orders. I want to understand his take on evil and what was happening around him as the Third Reich emerged.”Paul offered Greta some lettuce. She rejected it and went to beg Connie, chin on her knee."That is my pilgrimage to Europe this year. I'm searching for answers to these questions.""But David, if evil doesn't start inside the soul of some one individual, where does it come from?" Connie asked."It does begin there," I agreed, "but in most communities when one person acts or proposes evil, other people stand up to oppose them.""So you do believe evil is innately inside all of us," Don said."Yes and no," I said. "Like Paul said, I think evil comes when we are out of balance. We have lots of instincts.""What are they?" Leslie asked."I don't know that I have a complete list," I said, "but I took notes on what Paul said are naturally innate human qualities that form paradoxical polarities, opposite and yet both true at the same time.” I picked up my notepad and began to read my list. “There is the selfish desire to have, consume and collect. This includes the desire for power, fame, wealth and sex."On the other end of this polarity is the equally strong desire to contribute, to help, to provide, to rescue, to nurture. Self-esteem, in part, comes from our belief that we have made valuable contributions to the well-being of others."Another polarity is the desire to tell the truth, to be and express our authentic selves creatively and playfully."This desire to freely express ourselves is opposed by our desire to find an audience who can accept us and our willingness to change and adapt to be accepted."Another is our desire to pretend, play and create; to have fun and to extend ourselves merely for the joy of playing with others.” I crossed my legs. To Greta that was a sign to play gotcha with my foot. She crouched in front of my extended leg waiting for me to kick so she could avoid my moving foot. I ignored her. She growled and wagged her tail."Opposing this natural desire to play and pretend is the desire to have responsibility, to perform an important function, to stress ourselves by serving the needs of others.""That's quite a list," Paul said. "It's about balance, isn't it, like Aristotle said? These innate instincts are in a sort of tension with one another, and we and our egos are in the center choosing which impulse to listen to next."I reached to pet Greta to calm her. She withdrew and went to Connie who was finishing her sandwich."Yes," I agreed, "and we only occasionally get in the zone with these instincts balanced.""It's like parenting a child," Leslie said. "A child needs two types of parents. One to whom they can retreat and who loves them no matter what and the other who trusts and believes in them, who challenges them to take a risk and who helps them learn from their failures. When a child is very young, the instincts of the unconditional love parent should be more dominant in parenting. But as the child grows older the "I believe in you girl; you can ride that bike; if you fall, I'll pick you up and you can try again; you'll get it girl," that parent should be more dominant in parenting as a child gets older. A child should always be somewhere in the midst of this parenting tension.""Don’t you see it like that, David," Connie said taking her last bit of her sandwich, wadding her wrapper and handing it to Greta rather than placing it in the wastebasket."Yes, that's it," I agreed. "We are always surrounded by a variety of innate impulses. As we mature, we learn how to choose among them and how to return to an emotional equilibrium. When we are balanced, we swim through our various impulses, using one feeling, one emotion then another. There is never really a polarity of opposites. Rather our impulses are like different colors that exist on a canvas. Only two colors can often appear to clash, each color making the other more ugly. But when you add a third color to the canvas, suddenly the best of the two colors comes into view. The same goes for two seemingly discordant notes. A third note can create a chord and bring harmony. One single impulse alone, isolated from our other innate instincts and overused exclusively can create evil in us. Even the nurturing impulse, if only used, can spoil a child." Again the noise of Greta’s licking and chewing the sandwich wrapper intruded on our conversation."It's a good thing that our instincts don't exist alone in a vacuum," Paul said. "They are like different instruments in a band or different voices in a choir, played in rhythm, hitting the right notes at the right time, they can provide beauty. But played with no coordination, at the whim of strong uncontrolled impulse, ugliness, and evil result.""So our impulses need some guiding force," Leslie said. "Some coordinating purpose to serve. They need to accept some discipline to work together.""I suppose that's true," I said."Yes," Don said. "But to put them together in a way that produces beauty, we have to know each of our innate impulses. In each person, they are the same, perhaps. But they are distributed among us at different strengths. Some people are more sexual than others. Some have a stronger competitive gene. We cannot produce beauty in our behavior and our relationships unless we are aware of how these impulses operate in us.""It is far more complicated than the Id, Ego and Superego," Steve said. "The Id/Superego polarity is only one of many."Greta abandoned her sandwich wrap and went to Leslie to beg."I agree," I said."And yet it seems that there must be an organizing force or agent," Steve said, "acting more or less like Freud envisioned the ego.""I suppose that's right," I said reluctant to give Freud his due."It seems that organizing these innate instinctual impulses," Paul said, "and choosing among them would be a very complex task. There appears to be so much potential for missing a note or making a mistake. I could imagine that, at times, we could create what we think is a beautiful song, and yet it is all wrong, based on the false premises.""Yes," I said standing to clean up after Greta. "and this is what I think happens when people organize together to create evil. This is what occurred in the 1950s when Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy used American's fear of Communism to blacklist people, destroying lives and careers for no reason. Good people supported evil. They sang in harmony a song that was beautiful and seemed necessary and full of right to them, but was obviously sinister and evil once the light of history exposed its evil, senseless purposes.""That's why you are going to Europe to study evil and how people can be organized to bad ends," Steve said, "That seems silly to me when we have a history of genocide with the native Americans, not to speak of slavery or the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.""Of course, you are right, Steve," I said. "And I could study evil in Russia where the Communists killed 100,000,000 people during that same period or China where 70,000,000 were starved to death my Mao."I chose Europe because I think there is a clear intellectual path to follow. I think philosophers have helped Europe become culturally self-aware to what happened in the first half of the twentieth century, and I hope to trace that path and expose some universal human character flaws that enable a Hitler, a Trump, or a George Wallace to perpetrate their evil into a collective movement."MunichThe first destination on our trip was Munich. The flight was uneventful. I slept some. Marietta watched movies. We went by train from the airport and by taxi to the hotel. The hotel was not too far from our Air BNB apartment where we would stay the rest of the week.Exhausted, we tipped the bellman, put our bags on the luggage stands and fell asleep immediately when we entered our hotel room.My memory is a bit of a blur about Munich. It’s a beautiful city and it is the center of Hitler’s rise to power, his base of support came from Munich and the region of Bavaria. This color’s my view of Munich and dims my interest a bit.Southern Germany share many attitudes or prejudices found in the South in the U.S. I suppose Munich is to Germany in some ways as Atlanta is to the American South.The next day we exchanged the hotel for our apartment and began exploring the city. Street cars, sub-ways and buses were excellent here. The signage made sense and we were able to well navigate the city.While residing in Munich, we went to visit Dachau and Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein castle. We also took a walking tour of World War II historical sites in Munich.The general tourist sights are near the city center, Karlsplatz, Marienplatz and Max-Joseph-Platz. The Residency castle is adjacent to Marienplatz.Feldherrnhalle is in Odeonsplatz. That’s a war memorial building commissioned by Ludwig I to honor two military leaders who are generally considered inept, Johan Tilley, leader of the Bavarian army in The Thirty Years war and Karl Phillip von Wrede who led Bavaria’ fight against Napoleon.The famous Rathaus-Glockenspiel clock tower is in Marienplatz. Three times a day at 11:00 A.M., 12 P.M. and 5 P.M. in the summer on those hours the clock chimes. Thirty-two life sized figures twirl about serenaded by forty-three bells. It re-enacts two stories from the 1600s. It was built as part of the town hall in 1908. It can take fifteen minutes for the puppets to complete their dance and for the music to stop. A small golden rooster at the top of the Glockenspiel chimes three times to signal the end of the dance. I saw the dance, but I never heard the rooster.On the World War II tour, we saw bunkers and plain office buildings that housed the SS Headquarters in Munich and the Haus der Kunst. We walked and drove past this large neo-classical building built as a museum to showcase Hitler’s version of the best of German art. This building has been many things since World War II. It has housed a basketball court and a nightclub, but generally it has been used as a theater and exhibit hall.Over 90% of the buildings in Munich were damaged during WWII. Most of them have been rebuilt to resemble their former selves. It is hard to appreciate Munich’s beauty and its long history because the specter of Hitler and WWII are everywhere. The Hofbrauhaus is between Max-Joseph-Platz and Marienplatz. The Hitlers 1923 Beer Hall Putsch spilled out of the Hofbrauhaus into Marienplatz. Hitlers twenty-five points of the Nazi party were first promulgated there.The history of Nazism surrounded us in Munich.The First ConclaveOn our second day in Munich I conjured a meeting of my eminent experts on evil. Attending this meeting with me were the ghosts of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the still living spirit of E.O. Wilson and myself.Our first meeting was in Munich in the public garden of the Residence Palace which now served as government offices and a museum. It was adjacent to the Max-Joseph-Platz square, the site of the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch (Beer Hall Putsch) led by Hitler in 1923. A pavilion sat in the center of the garden (see picture). At the edge in the shade of the pavilion, a sixty-eight-year-old man played a guitar. His tunes ranged from blues to Spanish dance music. He played flawlessly. Also on the edge of the pavilion circle was a family with young children. The children raced scooters out into the park and back again to their parents who sat in the shade at the pavilions edge.Our circle of imaginary colleagues gathered in the pavilion’s center serenaded by the guitar player and pleasantly distracted by the children playing."Welcome to our conclave on evil," I said.Each of them took their seats on wooden folding chairs arranged in a circle around a knee high wooden table set with German kuchen, a bowl of whipped cream and coffee mugs and two full coffee pots.E.O. Wilson sat next to me on my right. On my left, sat Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Next to him and across from Bonhoeffer sat Friedrich Nietzsche.Wagner, dressed in his red berretta, matching wide crimson cravat tied in a bow, and wearing a pink blouse and a black satin smoking jacket, spoke first."I'm not pleased to be here," he said. "I am surrounded by my enemies who all consider Hitler's heroic attempt to give the world a superior breed of man to be evil. And among us today is one of the kike's Hitler should have exterminated, Herr Freud.""I'm not so thrilled to be here either," a sickly Nietzsche replied, sitting with a blanket spread over his legs, wearing wire-rimmed glasses above his thick and full mustache. "I especially abhor the company of Mr. Wagner.""Once upon a time you loved me," Wagner said, snickering reaching into his jacket for his pipe. "What was it you said of me. Let's see, didn't you say that I was the liberator of humanity, the saint of the arts. Didn't you say of me that I resurrected an ideal Greek antiquity that gave the world a perfect vision of mankind? Didn't you agree with me that the Jews had corrupted German life and culture? You read my treatise on Music and the Jews, and you agreed with it. You told me yourself in Tribschen."Wagner took his pipe found a tobacco pouch in another coat pocket and confidently filled his pipe and lit it. "You called me a genius. You saw me as a profound spirit of a great spiritual philosophy of life, and you wrote, agreeing with me, that We Germans have lost this spirit through the arrogant behavior of the Jews. You wrote this in a letter to me. And you now have the nerve to call me anti-semantic. And here you are to pretend that your ideas had nothing to do with the concentration camps. Do you forget what you wrote in Birth of a Tragedy? You as much as declared war on international Jewry in that essay."Yes, I confess," Nietzsche said pouring himself a mug of coffee. "I was once deluded by you. Parts of what you wrote, I still admire. Yes, I thought you and your whore for a wife, Cosima, would one day come to see that I was the apocalyptic intellectual hero who you and Cosima should have anointed as hour intellectual heir, but you refused to see my genius. To you, I was no more than an errand boy." He sat up and pushed his blanket off his lap and took a sip of coffee. "You are really a Jew. You are not even a man. You are more female than male, using women to disguise your true nature. Look at your pink blouse and your French fashions."“What!" Wagner shouted, putting his pipe down on the table. "You are calling me a homosexual. You, who never married, who never could consummate a relationship with a woman, you who died of syphilis. You, a despicable queer who never fathered one child, while I fathered three children that I know of and I have no idea how many of my mistresses had my children.""And you don't care," Nietzsche said. "You ignored or abandoned your children. You tried to pass off Siegfried, your oldest, to me to raise and tutor, but I refused.""You two sound like your despicable disciples, fighting on your behalf after your deaths," I said."These two agree more than they disagree," Bonhoeffer said taking a bite from one of the pastries on the table.”"Well, I did and do admire Wagner for his musical and theatrical genius,” Nietzsche said. “He wrote the world's best operas. Who could write an opera that lasts six hours and has attracted audiences for over a century? For me music has always been an expression of the Dionysian, transcending all boundaries, blurring the distinctions between sexes and pulling the listeners into the vortex of divine ecstasy. For me, Wagner's music was like a drug!” The guitar played a soft slow version of Edelweiss while Nietzsche talked."I mistakenly thought that a master of art like Wagner must be a genius about everything related to humans.""What do you mean when you speak of the Dionysian?" I asked."Take it away, Richard," Nietzsche said. "This is your idea, and it is the one idea you have that I agree with.""Aeschylus and Pindar," Wagner said, "were two playwrights, who wrote some of the best plays in human history. They followed or outlined the formula for real art and human wisdom, and they personified the best of ancient Greece. Greece lost its way with Socrates and his insistence of logic over emotion and his advocacy for democracy."The plays of Aeschylus followed a pattern. It is the best and most followed path to human wisdom. Real knowledge comes from experience. In life, two forces always oppose one another. They are the forces represented by the God of order, morality, and righteousness – Apollo. Dionysius, the God of passion, emotion, spontaneity, creativity, chaos and dissolution − Dionysius opposes Apollo." Wagner picked up his pipe and relit it. A six-year-old boy sped around the circle on his scooter. "Plays and our lives should begin on the path of unpredictable emotion and desire. If we try to follow the rules of bourgeois morality forced on us by society and the church, we will die never having lived. Life's real lessons come from experience from the mistakes we make."I left God in my youth and my creative passions took me many places that sometimes were thrilling but more often caused me pain. I followed my lust for life, and I learned. As I learned, I eventually returned to Apollo. I found good reasons for morals, and they became the light to my path."Good theater follows the same path. It begins with a semblance of order; then chaos comes creating misery. For the rest of the play, the protagonist follows his desires, and they lead to his destruction. In the end, he comes to the Apollonian way. Order returns in his death. A plot that follows this typical life path will grab an audience because they know this is their path, life's authentic way."What about your protagonist?" I asked. "They are like mythic heroes.""That's right," Wagner said, leaning back in his chair, taking a pull on his pipe and puffing smoke. "A great man is not a good man. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, were ruthless men. They didn't follow a moral code. They followed their lust for power, and they became great. I wrote my plays hoping to inspire a great German hero, like Hitler. And I did just that, an Ubermensch, a Superman, above all others whose instincts were often brilliant, entitled to whatever the world had to offer. Such men live grand, great lives that produce lessons and legends for posterity.""We need men such as these. Don't you agree, Fritz?""Yes, I do," Nietzsche said. "And that is the last thing on which we agree."The guitar player stopped playing and began putting away his guitar. The boy’s parents called for him to come with them. They were leaving.“That’s all the time we have for today,” I said. “Our next conversation will be in Neuschwanstein Castle an hour south of here.”Neuschwanstein CastleTwo days later Marietta and I traveled to Neuschwanstein Castle nestled in the Alps south of Munich. It is difficult to imagine such a place. It was the third castle that King Ludwig built trying to emulate King Louis XIV of France, his hero. The general shallow take of Ludwig is that he was crazy and that shortly after this castle was complete, he killed himself.A longer version is that he was gay and that he despised himself for this, making up for his feminine qualities by believing that he was Wagner’s and Nietzsche’s ubermensch born in a time when his absolute authority was restricted by parliaments.Ludwig II was King of Bavaria. His mother was concerned that he was a poor fit for public life because he was so fanciful and introverted. Bavarian ministers of the state and the royal court concurred. But his handsome physique and his whimsical generosity with farmers and laborers he met in this travels through the countryside made him a popular monarch.He avoided attending government functions and the court in Munich. He spent his personal vast income and wealth on artistic enterprises and his castles. His main interests were art, architecture and music. One of his first acts as King was to summon Wagner to his court, where Wagner praised him as Bavaria’s ubermensch. Wagner said of Ludwig: “Alas, he is also so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of gods.”Ludwig provided a residence for Wagner in Switzerland and later Wagner’s operatic theatrical compound in Bayreuth.Ludwig’s profligate, expensive lifestyle made him a debtor to Prussia and risked the stability of his government. His cabinet tried to reign in his expenses. Ludwig considered disbanding his cabinet, but they had him declared insane and placed his uncle on the throne in his stead. Later he and his doctor were found shot while taking a walk for his health. His death was declared a suicide.Neuschwanstein was one of three castles he built, the smallest. He spent over 31,000,000 German marks on them in his time. I have no idea what that translates into at today’s values.Neuschwanstein was to be his own personal home. The plan was that no one but him and his twenty plus servants would reside there. The construction began in 1878 and was not complete until after his death. He never spent one night in his palace retreat in the mountains.When we arrived at the castle, we were grouped into groups of twenty for the tour. We were first led into the entry foyer of the castle, a high-ceilinged circular room about twenty-five feet in diameter organized around a floor mosaic of a sun with giant painting of Louis XIV of France on the front wall. We continued on our tour listening to the guide tell stories of Ludwig, the construction of the castle, the money spent on the construction and the fine art objects that adorned each room.(If you are interested in how the inside of the castle looks google Neuschwanstein Castle and search for pictures.)Our Second ConclaveOnce we reached Ludwig’s salon, I knew that was the place. Magically the floor opened. A table filled with breads, cheeses, fruit, wine, plates and wine glasses moved up from below. Six chairs slide around about the table and our group reconvened. The table was rectangular. I sat at one end and Friedrich Nietzsche the other. Richard Wagner sat on Nietzsche’s right. Bonhoeffer next to him. Sigmund Freud sat to my right across from Bonhoeffer and E.O. Wilson sat next to him.I addressed this celebrated group. “Welcome,” I said, “to Neuschwanstein Castle, the small home of Ludwig II.” Richard Wagner reached for an open bottle of wine and poured himself a glass. “We are reconvening to try to understand how a culture, society or a nation of what most consider to be good people could be convinced to support or allow their government institutions to be perverted to evil purposes such as the holocaust.“Yesterday I visited the Nuremburg concentration camp, probably the most benign of Hitler’s extermination prisons and I cannot describe my disgust and horror at what I only tangentially witnessed. Hitler was a crazy man. How did he convince people to allow his tormented genius for cruelty to rule?”“Hitler was a genius, an ubermensch, what you call a superman,” Wagner said. “For the good of the Aryan race and the fatherland, the inferior had to be erased. It was an ugly business that had to be done just like a farmer must shoot an egg-sucking dog.”“You can really say that?” Wilson said glaring at Wagner.“Yes, I can,” Wagner replied. “Calm down, E.O. Let me pour you a glass of wine.” He poured wine into a glass and handed it to Wilson. “And how is that different from your country’s genocide of Native Americans or worse than the lynching’s and rape of Negroes in the South?”“It’s not,” Wilson replied, throwing the wine in Wagner’s face. “All of those things are disgustingly evil and can never be condoned.“My that was not very polite or respectful,” Wagner said taking a napkin and wiping his face, coat and shirt. “Good thing it was white wine. Tell them Friedrich,” Wagner said. “Great men like Hitler, Ludwig here, the Sun King and America’s Donald Trump shouldn’t follow bourgeois convention. To accomplish great things, you must break the rules.”"Nietzsche, you promoted the notion of an Ubermensch, didn't you?" I asked."Yes, I did," he agreed. "I never thought that the rules of my time were really part of the natural order. There is no God in heaven. God is dead. He was a myth man used to help them deal with their fear of death and the chaos of life. Life is a tragedy, like Buddha said. Life is about suffering and confusion. There are no rules that will produce happiness. Live, love, laugh, cry and die.” He reached for a win bottled and poured himself a glass. “That's the best life can give. It takes a superior man to see this and rise above his culture and return to the Greek ideal of Aeschylus, where a man's love of man is the highest form of love. Women are mostly a waste of time, good for making babies, but they are not strong enough to overcome cultures, morals and break repressive taboos.” He sipped his wine, tore off a piece of bread from a loaf, and asked, "You agree with me, don't you, Sigmund."Freud perked up. He pulled a cigar from inside his coat pocket, struck a match and lit it. He was dressed in his usual tweed suit with a watch in the suits watch pocket, hanging from a suit button by a gold chain. "Generally, yes, I do," he said. "I've never been a religious man. I was raised a Jew, but I never thought of myself as a Jew. I think of myself as a man of science, like Mr. Wilson here," he pointed to E.O. Wilson. "I think of myself as a student of the science of man."The ninety-year-old Wilson looked out of the window, then at Freud with a scowl on his face. He squirmed in his chair and said, "I don't consider myself as only a seeker to understand man, I am searching for the truths of nature and of this planet. And I believe that natural laws govern us all." He reached for a knife, and a loaf of bread. He cut a slice of bread, then a slice of cheese and took a bite."Yes, I do too," Freud said reaching for a grape and popping it into his mouth. "And my religion is the science of man. I see society as repressing vital natural urges, just as Mr. Nietzsche said and yes, I hope to help people throw off the yoke of civilization and be free to express their real feelings and desires. And yes, I don't think logic or society's order does a man much good. We should follow our libido, our passion in the sense that Mr. Wagner and Mr. Nietzsche suggest. You agree with that, David. In your last book, you said emotion precedes thought and that we should follow our feelings into action. That's the purpose of feelings, you said.""Not exactly," I said swallowing the bite of apple. "Yes, our brain experiences an emotion before it thinks. And I agree that it is better to express our feelings in words rather than repress or deny them. But we have come a long way in understanding our feelings and our brains since 1930. There are constructive ways to process our feelings that make us proud and bring us honor and there are destructive ways that can hurt our souls and destroy our self-esteem and character and hurt other people.""Like what," Freud said reaching for a banana. "I think you should follow your passion, just as Nietzsche suggests. The bourgeois rules and morals simply lead to shame and repression. We should ignore these moral conventions. Sex, for example, is good in all its forms, so long as you have two consenting adults. Sexual feelings should be spoken and acted on, not repressed." He peeled the banana and took a bite and then a puff from his cigar."And it's a good thing then to have sex with your sister-in-law," Bonhoeffer said."Why would you say such a thing?" Sigmund asked."And you wanted to be the most famous psychiatrist in the history of the world, which by the way, you are, and you didn't think historians would discover your affair with Minna Barneys, your wife's sister. Jung told about the time that Minna confessed your affair to him." Bonhoeffer reached for the wine bottle and poured himself a new glass."Oh, that's just professional jealousy.""Did you really think that no one would notice that you registered at a famous hotel in Majola, Switzerland with Minna as Dr. Freud and Frau. You were forty-two. She thirty-three. It was August 13, 1898. The worn hotel ledger records your signature as Dr. Sigm Freud and Frau.” Bonhoeffer sipped his wine. “You had always admitted that she was your closest confidante, that after having seven children by you, your wife cut you off. Franz Maciejewski discovered your signature in 2006. You also wrote that marriage destroys passion and that obstacles enhance it. Your hero, like Fritz's here, was Julius Caesar. You didn't care about Hitler and the Jews. You didn't even consider yourself a Jew. You were above the war, too important to bother. You knew that your international friends would find a way to keep you and your family safe, and they did.""You don't know the truth about my private life," Freud said pushing the lit end of a cigar firmly on his discarded banana peel in the ash tray on the table. The red char sizzled in the banana peel. "What if my wife, Martha, was told by her physician that another pregnancy might kill her? What if she brought her sister into our home to be my mistress? What if she, her sister Minna, and I were happy with this arrangement? You don't know the truth of that. My private affairs are none of your business.""Oh yes, they are our business," Wagner said, leaning forward, taking a knife, slicing the bread, cutting himself a piece. He also cut himself a slice of cheese. "You borrowed many great ideas from Rousseau. He first wrote that early childhood trauma shaped our character. He was brutally honest about himself and the sins of his personal life. He valued and tried to serve the truth. But you hide from your truth. You, who hold yourself out as the wise guru who knows what psychological health is and isn't!""History shouldn't judge me by these private matters such as my sex life or how I raised my children," Freud said sitting back in his chair folding his arms. "I should be judged by the contributions I made to the science of man.""History is not that kind," Wagner said, "Historians are voracious truth seekers, and we, the famous, are their special targets."The truth," Nietzsche pronounced pouring himself a glass of wine. "What is the truth? You talk like there is such a thing. The truth is what the victor in war says it is. David, how much do your American History books focus on the American Indians or the Trail of Tears? How much credit do the slaves and their ancestors get for their contribution to America and their fight for freedom? Who were the Sherpas who led Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of Mount Everest? All truth is relative. Everybody has a different version of truth. That's why trying to do good or right is so absurd. There is no good or right, because what is good for one person is bad for another. Leave Sigmund alone. In some cultures, it is a fine thing to have two wives. Madame Pompadour shepherded over one hundred mistresses for Louis the Fifteenth. No one seems to begrudge Louis a mistress. Why are you giving Sigmund hell for this?""Because," Bonhoeffer replied, sitting up, elbows on his knees, dressed in his minister’s tan sports jacket, a starched white shirt, and ministerial collar. "He developed a whole theory of neurosis around family dynamics, called the Oedipus complex. Like you, Richard, and you, Fritz, Sigmund thought all wisdom originated in Greece. He was obsessed with Greek mythology and antiquities. While the two of you were disciples of Aeschylus, Sigmund found his wisdom in Sophocles, and he built his theory around the play, Oedipus, the King, and his own personal history of how his mother created family dysfunction by rejecting his father and adoring him." He reached into his pleated brown trousers pulled out a package of cigarettes, thumped the pack to release one cigarette. He retrieved and lit it. "And if he's going to make such a big deal about how a mother loving her son can destroy a family and create a narcissistic son, what damage do you think it would do to a family for a father to take his wife's sister as his mistress and not explore the implications of that and why was it, that out of seven Freud children, only Anna, the baby, amounted to much?"Sigmund, wouldn't Anna be an excellent case study?""Perhaps," he said, "but in some things, I have taken great pains to maintain my privacy. Obviously, I failed.""The truth comes out," I said. "Your colleague Jung.""I never considered him my colleague," Freud interrupted. "He was my student, who betrayed me.""Well, he considered you his colleague. And he said that there were treasures in our repressed dark side and that the sun eventually found its way to expose these parts and when it did, the sun transformed feces into fertilizer.""Yes," Freud answered, sitting back in his chair, and pulling out another cigar. This one, he didn't light. He just put it in his mouth and chewed on its end."I agree that we shouldn't glorify truth-telling," Bonhoeffer said, taking off his wire-rimmed glasses, and using his handkerchief to clean the lenses. "Evil persons distort reality to suit their purposes. We should not consider rewarding the evil person on the few occasions when they tell the truth. Moral principles just become tools of the evil. Fanatics have principles. We must make exceptions to general rules that often seem just. We must ignore reputation, conscience, facts and anything else that justifies an evil status quo. We must act against evil. In any given context, there is a right thing to do, a way to oppose evil. That action may not seem right to those who follow social conventions but if it stands against evil, it is right. We must use evil as our organizing force. Our compass, our North Star is whatever selfless action opposes evil. Serving ‘the truth,' whatever that is, may simply be another tool of evil.""Evil may be your North Star, Dietrich," a tall, thin E.O. Wilson said. Like Freud, Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche, he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was the only one among the five guests, who did not have a tobacco habit. He was dressed in an academic frumpy, wrinkled, gray suit and loose tie, around a light blue shirt, with the top button unbuttoned. "But my moral North Star is the truth, and I think I'm the only one of us who believes in absolute truth. I’m surprised Dietrich doesn't. I'm not a religious man. Oh, I come from Alabama, and we have our gods in Alabama. They are football quarterbacks, large breasts, Jack Daniels and Jesus. I traded in Jesus for science and the study of nature. I suppose I'm a lot like a tribal shaman from prehistoric times. They were trying to explain nature and how nature acted on man. They used metaphysical gods to do that. Now science has proven that God does not exist in the heavens, that nature has laws, which if we understand them, we can manipulate and create various forms of matter and energy.” He reached for an orange and began to peel it as he spoke."I study nature in the form of insects, and I find that there are laws of how creatures act in communities. These are natural laws. They are the absolute truth when we discover them. But the problem with absolute truth is that the universe is expanding. Reality is always changing. In Nature, old species are dying, and new ones are being born. Every absolute truth we discover begins to change the moment we discover it. Penicillin killed germs in 1960, but it doesn’t so much today."And when we do discover some new truth, new questions we don't understand present themselves to us. Our search is endless.” He put the orange peel in the ash tray next to Freud’s banana peel and cigar and put an orange section in his mouth."I am trying to be a prophet for a new religion and that religion is the science of nature, particularly earth's nature. We humans do what all of earth's creatures do. We rearrange our habitats to suit us. And we are on the verge of selfishly destroying the habitat of other species vital to our survival."Oh, I'm not worried about Nature or Earth because Nature always wins in our struggle against it. If we continue on this current path, Nature will allow us to explode atomic bombs and destroy humanity. Nature will allow us to pollute the atmosphere and water so that we all die from our own pollution. Then we will be gone like the dinosaurs and so many other of earth's species. Our planet won't care. It will continue creating new species that can adapt to live on earth until it spins into an orbit that cannot sustain life.” Wagner reached for an apple and took a loud crunching bite as Wilson talked."We humans are blessed to be on this blue planet. Our religion could and should be understanding its nature and its rules. Species that live successfully on earth exist in communities. Those, who seem to survive best, follow certain community standards, laws of nature, absolute truths, at least for a while."We can learn about these laws, just as Newton and physical sciences are learning about the laws of energy and matter. This search for Nature's truth is an exciting, enthralling, adventure. I want to blow the trumpet and be one of those who sounds the call inviting all humans to join this search.” Nietzsche put his cigarette out in the ashtray and shook his head disagreeing Wilson continued. "I believe that as we search for nature's rules and laws that we will also discover the true science of man, as you, Fritz and you, Sigmund, have tried to do. I think many of human science's truths that we learn will be reflected in Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad and pantheism."I expect these truths will be like David suggests. They will be paradoxes, polar opposite truths that can be combined and eventually seen as both true when we discover the oil that can reduce the friction between the two seemingly contradictory truths. David says a third position works magically to help opposites fit together as truth.” Wagner leaned back in his chair, laughed and took another loud crunch from his apple."The Bible tells one story after another. Each story represents a truth that opposes another truth revealed in another story. Do humans need rules of conduct? Yes, is the answer. And do humans need to ignore rules of conduct and use love and compassion to guide human behavior rather than rules? If you listen to Dietrich over here,” he nodded toward Bonhoeffer as Bonhoeffer ate another slice of his orange, “he seems to find a way in which these polarities are both real. In Genesis, there are two entirely different mythical versions of how we were created. One says we were created good in the image of God. The other says that we all have an inherent defect. Could they both be true? Is paradox the real nature of a human truth? Perhaps so.”"What does this have to do with evil?" Bonhoeffer asked.I had been taking notes. I put down my pen and pad and said, "Wilson, here makes the point that there is absolute truth; that truth can be relative and also absolute. That also seems to be what you are saying, Dietrich. Yes, it is wrong to take the life on another, except when it is not, like in your plot to kill Hitler. And it is wrong to rape a comatose woman unless she is our species last fertile female and she can become pregnant and bear a child. Generally, Wilson is saying we can know the truth and build a consensus reality around it. That is what science does. Abstract mathematical formulas have predicted physical reality.""That's Quatsch," Nietzsche said reaching for another cigarette."What is Quatsch?" Wilson asked."It is the German term for what you say is B.S.""What part of what I said is Quatsch? By the way, I like that word." I picked up my pen and pad and wrote it down."Because all ideas serve their creator in some way. You, David, developed a theory of sense of community because you were from a small town and you felt alienated in the city, so you tried to define the essential elements of the love and sense of community you knew in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.” He lit his cigarette, took a puff, and continued, “You wanted to see if you could reproduce those elements in a city, and even though you identified the elements, you have never accomplished your purpose. When you are so invested personally in your theory, how can we depend on it to be true? It is your truth because you want it to be so.""No, I didn't want it to be so," I said. Wagner laughed again and I continued talking ignoring him. "I wanted to know if it was or was not so. I didn't care what the answer was. I posed a question, and I used science to answer the question. Some of my ideas were wrong. I stupidly thought that shared values did not relate to cohesion in a community. I posed the question, used the scientific method, reduced responses to numbers and the numbers told me that I was wrong about that. I had to accept what the numbers said as the truth. That's science."Many of your social science colleagues," Nietzsche said tapping his cigarette ash in the ashtray, "quote Foucault who more recently picked up my flag of relative truth and waved it. They agree with him that there is no such thing in the human sciences as absolute truth because everyone is different and, people create their own individual truth relative to their circumstances, relative to who they are and how their egos need defending.""Yes, and I think they are wrong," I said putting my elbows on the table. "If all truth is relative and there is no universal truth, then we have no reason to condemn or fight Hitler when he slaughtered the Jews, or Idi Amin, or Stalin, or Donald Trump. If the truth is relative, then they were not wrong to do and say what they did and said. There is no basis to dispute their relative truths."This idea that truth is relative, and that societal truth is created by the strong makes Hitler possible.” I pushed back my chair, stood and pointed, “You, Sigmund and you, Richard and you, Fritz admire men like Julius Caesar who ruthlessly seize power like Hitler, Lenin, and Mussolini. You eschew morals with the term ‘bourgeois' and ridicule religious values as serving the status quo. You think that change requires a heroic, strong man who calculatingly manipulates others to seize power. The relativity of truth allows this because there is no absolute truth to oppose it."This,” I said sitting back down, “is one of the conditions I was searching for, that I think leads to mass evil. It is the suspension of the truth as a force, the censoring of the press, the elimination of contrary voices and opinions that come when we have a leader who spins the truth so that a lie looks like the truth and it becomes the truth of a whole people, their relative truth. Yes, Aryan Germans would benefit from the elimination of the Jews. It was good for them. Their egos need a scapegoat after their abysmal failure in WWI. And the Jews were easy targets because truth was relative.""This is confusing me," Freud said. "Sometimes truth is relative, and sometimes truth is absolute? How can that be?"“Gentlemen,” I said. “And I use the term loosely, as confusing as the truth may be, our time here is at an end.” I pushed my chair back from the table. “I haven’t said much about my visit to Nuremburg, because I don’t have the words to describe my experience there. I have a similar feeling about this place. Somehow the extravagance of Neuschwanstein Castle seems a part of the evil we are studying. This place also testifies to the extremes of human inequality. The fact that millions of people are fascinated by death camps and castles, that they pay millions in entry fees to the German government also seems somehow to be a part of this evil. All of this was built for the pleasure of one man, a chronically depressed man trying to buy his way into contentment at the expense of a nation.”“Ludwig, was an ubermensch,” Wagner said. “You will never understand.”“You are right. I won’t. At any rate, we take our leave of this place. We will reconvene in Cesky- Krumlov in Castle Gardens.”With these words, the table began to slowly disappear below the floor, replaced by a new floor.Cesky-KrumlovWhy Cesky-Krumlov in the Czech Republic? The answer is that it is a direct beneficiary of a deal with the devil.It was called Czechoslovakia prior to World War II. In the 19th century it was the industrial center of Europe. Next to Germany, it had Europe’s largest army. Hitler had always planned to expand eastward. He had never wished to create a western front. His plan was to conquer Eastern Europe and Russia exterminating all non-Germans just as the U.S. had exterminated the Native Americans. This plan was his version of Manifest Destiny. Czechoslovakia was his first target.He lined his troops on the border ready to attack. His pretext was that german-speaking people living in Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia boarding Germany, were being persecuted and he had to defend them.Edvard Benés, the President of the Czechoslovakia government, could have put up a good fight. His troops were well-armed and the natural mountains gave them a distinct advantage, but he knew the German Luftwaffe would destroy Czechoslovakia’s beautiful towns and cities, Prague especially and Cesky-Krumlov as well, the small city that had maintained its historical buildings and beauty dating back to 1300s.He decided to preserve this historical architecture and spare his people the many deaths and great hardships that would come with war.Hitler’s troops moved quickly into Czechoslovakia, and took over the Czech industrial machine. Here Hitler built most of his tanks and airplanes. Prague, Cesky-Krumlov and the rest of Czechoslovakia were never victimized by German bombings.Cesky-Krumlov is a medieval town on the upper Volga River. The river runs through its middle. Several arched Romanesque bridges cross the river. Much of the town is a pedestrian only area. Few native Czech people live in the town. Most of the residences have been transformed into hotels or tourist rental apartments. Workers live outside of the town and commute to work.If one could eliminate the gawking tourists with cameras, one can imagine being hundreds of years back in time walking on the small cobblestone streets.Here the Volga River was a small stream. It was late summer. Rafting companies and beer halls dotted the river. Large eight-person rubber rafts filled with tourists holding paddles formed ribbons laughing convoys floating in the river. Each convoy has rafts of the same color, blue, red or orange. They floated the river, stopped for beer or burgers and fries and returned to their rafts and floated until they were too sunburned, too tired or too drunk to continue on. There were many pick-up spots where raft companies had buses to pick up the tourists and trucks with trailers to ferry the rafts back to their home base.Marietta and I were there to attend a wedding. We stayed in a tourist apartment complex containing five apartments. The wedding party had three of these five. The apartments were newly renovated. Every inch of the building was utilized. We were in an attic apartment. It was impossible to get into our king-sized bed on the roof’s side because of the roof’s slant. The sinks, toilets and tile were all new. And many buildings around us were being renovated.The wedding had the promise of producing many dramas. Both sets of parents, the Czech brides’ and the American groom’s parents were divorced. The Czech father and mother did not speak. The American parents spoke, but there were undertones of resentment beneath their forced smiles.Marietta and I have a persistent conflict about packing for a trip. I want to pack light, and she wants to pack the whole closet.“Be sure to pack nice shoes for the wedding,” she said as I was packing.I had some very light woven leather shoes that I thought would not take up much space in the bad and would do for the wedding. Marietta approved them. The shoes’ soles were crepe rubber, light-weight.The wedding was a mile from our apartment. Walking was our only option. As I walked, I noticed the rubber soles of my shoes were separating from the leather uppers. By the time we got to the park, the wedding venue, my shoes made a flopping sound as I walked.Sitting through the wedding was no problem but getting to the reception, another mile walk would be difficult.The reception was two hours after the wedding at 4:30. Marietta stayed in the park after the wedding and I attempted a trek back to the apartment to change shoes. I got half way there before my shoes completely separated from their soles and I was walking with leather uppers and sock feet on cobblestones.My feet were not happy. I sat down on a bench and luckily Marietta walked by on her way to the reception. I showed her my shoes.“I can’t walk another step,” I said. “Will you go get me my other pair of shoes back at the apartment?”“No,” she answered. “I’m in high heels and I can’t walk on these cobblestones either. I’ll look around. We are in the middle of town. Maybe we can buy you some shoes. You stay here. Let me see what I can find.”She returned with a pair of cheap imitation Birkenstock sandals. Her foot is the same length as mine so she knew they would fit.I made it the rest of the day and into the night comfortably in my new sandals.The most clearly Czech part of this wedding was the traditional Czech ritual of the bride breaking a plate. Between the main meal and desert, people were asked to gather and observe. The maid of honor handed the bride a plate. She raised it above her head and threw it hard on the stone floor. It disintegrated. The best man gave the groom a broom and a dustpan. He swept the pieces of the broken plate into a pile and bent down to sweep the pile into the dustpan. As he did, his wife put her foot on his head. Then she bent down to help. Everyone clapped and laughed. This ceremony seemed to be an antidote to the potential male arrogance of the Czech men. In the Czech culture, men are active in housekeeping work. They are expected to help cook and clean.Several people, men, women, friends and family of both the bride and groom made many toasts throughout the evening. The bride and groom separately worked the room and by the end of the night had managed to greet and speak with all 100 or so guests.I began this wedding discussion looking for possible family dramas. I was disappointed. The spirit of this event couldn’t have been happier or more loving and accepting. The wedding party went on into the morning.Our Third ConclaveNow to the next day and the convocation of minds focused on evil. Six white wooden folding chairs were arranged in a circle under a giant European Elm tree on flat terrain in Castle Gardens above the castle at Czesky-Krumlov. We were behind and above the grassy area where the wedding was the day before.As I took my seat in the circle the others were seated, Wagner to my left, E.O. Wilson to my right, Freud, next to him, Nietzsche next to Freud, then Bonhoeffer completing our six sitting between Wagner and Freud.As I sat down Wagner said, “What no food or drink for us? You couldn’t even get the wedding leftovers?”“Sorry about that Richard,” I said.“And people strolling about everywhere,” Nietzsche queried.“Yes, I am afraid so,” I said. “We are not in Neuschwanstein Castle anymore. We are simply people among other people.”“I like that,” Bonhoeffer said.“I don’t,” Wagner said.“So we left off with Sigmund being confused about the truth,” I said looking at my notes.“Enough about the truth,” Bonhoeffer said. “I want Sigmund to explain his life force’s Eros’ opposition to his death force, Thanatos. How can the superego and the id both be motivating forces at the same time?""Thanatos," I said, leaning back into my chair and looking up into the tree limbs. "This was Sigmund's attempt to explain the death of 100,000,000 people in the first half of the twentieth century. It was not because of evil. For Sigmund, it was a species event, balanced by an offsetting species event of significant increase in birthrate. It happens in coyotes and wolves. When their population is significantly reduced, and their survival in their territory is threatened, the number of pups per litter increases. It is the same in horticulture, isn't it, Wilson? Pruning is good for roses. Perhaps, Thanatos or the death instinct is our species' attempt to prune itself.""That's right," Freud said taking out a cigar from his vest pocket. "It has little to do with religion, right or wrong. It is another of our instincts, and I like how you juxtapose our instincts in a paradox, David. Eros is on a polarity with Thanatos.""Sigmund, when are you going to grow some gonads?" Bonhoeffer said picking up a small stick from the ground and tossing it at Freud. "There is evil. Evil slaughtered millions of your tribe. And you say it is instinct.""Yes, I do," Freud said, ducking away from the flying stick. "You and others proclaim you know the truth and what is right for the world. When I see this, I get sick. I don't trust your self-serving pronouncements of right and wrong or the truth. Such clerical moral judgments have oppressed humankind for much too long. I aim to avoid this topic of good and evil. I think this idea of morals is a culture’s attempt to repress self-expression. I don't trust righteous people who say they know the truth for others.""You mean you don't like it when someone judges you for humping your wife's sister," Wagner said laughing."You all are being too hard on Sigmund," Wilson said leaning forward on his elbows, "especially you, Dietrich. Before Freud discovered and advocated talking therapy, people, usually women, were confined in mental asylums in cells, sometimes chained to their beds or the wall simply because they were sad and anxious. Freud labeled them hysterical, and he believed that they suffered from this form of what he called “neurosis” because of sexual urges they could not express and if given time and an empathetic ear, they would disclose their forbidden urges, and when they did, they would be cured. And he had some success. He carefully recorded notes of his sessions documenting his work. His talking therapy was a significant advance in the treatment of psychological problems in his time. We own him a great debt.""Thank you, E.O.," Freud said lighting his cigar and taking a puff. "I like to think I made a contribution to human science.""And you have," Wilson said. "Brain research is proving that lots of the brain's work to control heart rate, for example, or to regulate body temperature is done unconsciously. While we have no evidence yet of the unconscious working as you described, we do have considerable evidence that there is an unconscious part of our brains.” Wilson picked up a stick from the ground and began scratching a star of David in the ground."And you offer a theory of human dysfunction that is very relevant to our conversation on evil. You showed how early trauma could and does skew a child's worldview; how it can mentally cripple us for life, filling us with unnecessary ego defenses that become aggressive, mean actions that hurt others and alienate and isolate ourselves."Your idea of how the conscience becomes an over-developed, what you call ‘superego,' is something that you contend develops in early childhood to avoid the anxiety associated with punishment from our parents. We use it to reassure our parents that we will punish ourselves, so they needn't bother. As children, you said, that to please our parents, we sacrificed broader options for action in the interest of keeping our parents happy. This becomes a rigid way of thinking that limits us in adult life.” Wagner put his foot on Wilson’s star and rubbed it out. Wilson ignored him and continued speaking."You were a student of humans. You used Darwin's ideas, and you said instinct was the mainspring of our behavior. You were looking for the truth of human life, the order that we all share, a more or less basic human nature. You placed evil inside our instincts, despairing that we cannot change ourselves. You believe that we are not the malleable creatures described by enlightenment thinkers; that our conflict with society is inevitable, as Nietzsche suggests.” Nietzsche nods and pulls a cigarette from an open pack in his coat pocket."Like Rousseau, you see us as born with the great potential to use our instincts in a healthy, creative life, but we become socialized, inevitably, into objects used by society, rigid beings who neurotically defend ourselves by repressing our healthy instincts. This is your way of explaining how evil can happen in individuals and for you, the individual is where social evil begins. It starts in some personal imbalance that society can manipulate into mass evil. Is that next?“Yes, you have summarized a version of what I think,” Freud said. “All this is very relevant to our discussion."“Wilson,” Nietzsche said, “you haven’t opined on evil yet. Where do you think it comes from?”“I think evil comes from ignorance and the fear of the quest,” Wilson said. “Many of us want to know. We want to believe we have mastery over our world.”“While that is well and good, we must also admit that we don’t know and that whatever mastery we have is limited.”“I don’t believe in a god. I believe in an ordered universe that operates lawfully. If I had a god, it would be our planet earth and my mission in the service of my god would be to understand and protect this planet from the damage of humankind. It is my constant quest to learn more about nature. Remember, I believe we can know the truth and that the truth is absolute. Knowing the truth doesn’t stop the quest for truth because each truth we discover creates more questions. Every discovery opens doors for another search. And the universe is constantly expanding. This means that as the universe expands, more truths are being created and old truths changed.“We humans are privileged to have the brain power to understand much of what is happening. We are fortunate to be able to watch and learn as the universe unfolds itself.“But many of us refuse this invitation from the universe. We pretend we know. We long for certainty so much that we create myths that provide a façade made of false truths and half-truths. We use our myth as a defense against our ignorance.“Our internal quest to know ourselves is just as important as the external quest. Truths about ourselves are just like the truths of the universe. One discovery creates more questions. For most of us we begin life believing we know everything about ourselves and we end life believing that we know so little and there is so much more to learn about ourselves.“All of us know that we have limits, but we want to believe that there are some special people among us who have the answers. We are excited and awed by people who proclaim that they are the experts; they have the answers. They are our savior. They can bring back glory or can discover the way to the promise land.“Instead of joining the human quest for knowledge, instead of acknowledging that no one of us knows the way, we look for gurus and heroes to give us a shortcut, to do the work for us and give us the answers, the truth that is certain and never changes.“This desire for certainty and fear of the quest and of the unknown is what makes so many of us vulnerable to narcissistic people who use our fear to control and manipulate us to do evil in their name, using their authority to justify wrong, the authority we give them because they are our hero.“Thank you, Wilson,” I said. “We are here today in part to honor you. We are on a hill outside of Czesky-Krumlov. We happen to be in the Czech Republic, but we could be anywhere that people use land to grow things. We sit on a rolling pasture on the ground in a corner where trees on the fence line offer shade. Notice how E. O.’s gaze is often on the ground watching the ants, etymologist that he is.”“Thank you,” Wilson said. “But if this is my turn to lead the discussion on evil you have put me at a great disadvantage by placing me outside. I will be so easily distracted by all the life around me. I’s so curious.”“Didn’t you say that ignorance, like Richard’s here, is the source of evil?” Freud asked.“That’s part of what I said,” Wilson agreed.“If that’s true,” Freud said, “then universal education should be the answer, but it’s not. Richard here, can read and write. Fritz is brilliant and earned a Ph.D. and we can see to what his Ubermensch idea led.“Horace Mann started this education movement in hopes that wiping out ignorance through education would protect society from evil and that clearly didn’t work.”“The problem is not with education,” Wilson said. “The problem is with people like you, Sigmund, who believed they are right and many of your theories are right. But it is the certainty that your theories are right; it is the certainty that you know that creates evil. You can educate someone to read and write. They may be brilliant, like Fritz and say they are so smart that they have memorized the Bible and they believe it is, no they know it is the word of God, infallible. They are educated, but they remain ignorant because they believe they know. They are so desperate for certainty and clarity about life that they take the beautiful stories of the Bible and they insist on knowing and demanding that we agree with them that these stories are not stories at all, but the absolute truth.“That is where evil comes from and Sigmund, you believe that you gave the world the truth about human nature, don’t you?”“Yes, I do,” Sigmund confessed. “And so do millions of mental health professionals and scholars all over the world.”“Sigmund, you are so deluded,” Wilson said. “Women have been trying to tell you that you are half-right only and maybe not even that. Your theories are about thrusting your instinct into the world. They are about penetrating and seed-planting, like I said earlier.“That’s one part of creativity. I’ll give you that, but look at this ant marching back to his family underground carrying this bit of a leaf.” Wilson pointed to a large black ant with a piece of leaf captured by its pinscher. “Why is the ant doing that? It’s to nurture its tribe.“When women have tried to tell you to restrain your enthusiasm for seed-planting and pick up a towel and wash a dish, you call them castrating They are only asking you to help with the tending/nurturing side of creativity.“When women have ambition, and want to offer ideas and theories and project their desires into the world, you accuse them of penis envy.“That’s ignorance, Sigmund, and it quickly becomes oppressive and evil.”“Wilson, how can you say that we should search for truth, that there is absolute truth and then you say when we find it and proclaim it with certainty, we are evil?” Nietzsche said.“I’ve tried to explain this before, but you don’t want to hear this. Life is full of ambiguity. The fact that we search for clarity in clouds of ambiguity does not make the ambiguity disappear and clarity appear. Ambiguity will always be there. And that’s a great thing because it always gives us a reason to question and search. It is the fear of the ambiguous that’s evil.“Most of us now realize that difference is not the foundation of a social hierarchy and that if it is, that is evil. Now we are confronted by people who embrace their ambiguity calling themselves neither male nor female, but “trans” people, ambiguous. Some of us are threatened by them peeing in the same toilet as we do. What are we afraid of?“I confess; I want to know that when I place my foot in front of me there will ‘certainly’ be ground under my foot. I am frightened when this certainty disappears. But sometimes it does.“When that happens and ambiguity replaces certainty, we are all afraid, at first. We all want to make the ambiguity go away and make the certainty return. As I said before, sometimes we become so frightened of ambiguity and so desperate for certainty that we invent certainty in our minds when ambiguity has not yet been resolved with information and knowledge.“We can’t abide ambiguity any longer so we create a fictional certainty and if we can’t do that we look desperately for someone who can. We follow anyone who can convince us that they know and can simplify life for us.“If we can find real faith patience, so that in the face of not knowing, when we are surrounded by ambiguity, we can patiently search and build certainty carefully bit by bit; and further if we can see ambiguity as an invitation to and adventure, to an investigation into an unknown cave, we will find ourselves intrigued rather than frightened. “This intrigue, this wonder, this curiosity is the antidote to ignorance and evil.”“None of you have addressed the current popular theory about evil,” I said.“What’s that?” Wagner asked.“It is that evil is caused by alienation,” I said. “The idea comes from Karl Marx. He said that our society is sick because we create a social infrastructure that marginalizes others. He contends that all people should have a significant place in society and share its wealth. And that our society is sick and will always be out of balance when some people are inside and safe and others are so alienated from society that they don’t belong or matter.“That makes sense,” Bonhoeffer said. “If Hitler had been accepted to the Vienna Art Academy when he had applied, we would not have had WWII. He was rejected, angry and alienated, looking for someone to blame. He blamed the Jews. What if he had been accepted? How many people can’t find a way to play in society and are marginalized and discounted. This was one source of Hitler’s hate and he was just one of millions of unemployed, marginalized alienated Germans after WWI, looking for a scapegoat and a road forward to success. This was a recipe for hate.“And in the United States today,” Wilson said, “Many white male workers have lost their job to automation and globalization. They blame the loss of their good jobs on immigrants and or on trade policies that allow cheap goods to be produced outside the U.S. and sold inside.“This is only two of several factors that have threatened the white male. Others include women moving into areas that were once predominantly male professions and white men pridefully refusing to go back to school to be re-educated for more technically advance jobs. Consequently U. S. corporations must import educated immigrant employees for jobs that these white males could apply for if they would be willing to be retrained. This makes for an alienated segment of the U.S. populations who are looking for a hero to rescue them and protect them from their enemies.”“This is just the beginning,” I said. “What will happen when trucks, trains, and cars drive themselves? Millions of people will lose their jobs. Technology will displace desk clerks in hotels, bank tellers in banks, research specialists in law firms and people everywhere will lose their jobs. Unemployment will be endemic everywhere.”“What do you propose?” Wagner asked.“I propose that we use the New Deal approach to jobs. We can create jobs that serve the public, jobs to build roads and bridges, jobs to care for our national parks, jobs to create public art.“What if we paid one parent in every family to tend children below the age of six? What if our schools had smaller classes and teachers were better paid?“There would be zero unemployment. The wealthy few would be heavily taxes to pay for this.”“But David,” Nietzsche said, “you are forgetting about how insatiable people’s appetites are and how creative people can be in stimulating human desire. People pay so much for services and things they don’t need, but that advertisers and social climbers convince us that we need. Wanting is the economy’s engine. We have thought technology would put people out of work for over two hundred years and it hasn’t happened yet. The reason is because people want. And other people titillate their wants and other people work to satisfy these wants. As people have more free time, they want more. As they want more, more jobs are created.“David, you are an impatient fear monger creating answers for people. You are asking for a hero to save others, protect them from danger that may not exist just as you accuse me and Richard of doing. Face the ambiguity, the unknown of the future. Don’t give an answer to a problem that isn’t there yet. Trust the invisible hand of the market. Let desire do its job. Be patient.“What we need from government are regulations that create equal opportunity and level the playing field. Yes, we need a progressive tax structure in which the wealthy pay a larger percentage of their income than the poor or middle class. Yes, we need for government to spend money on infrastructure so that goods, and people can move and trade and expand. Yes, we need public art to tell our collective story. And yes, we need to pay for the nurture and care of our next generation. But we don’t need the government to rescue us. We need them to empower us.”“David, this is boring,” Wagner said. “And I know from boring. I’m not here to discuss the merits of capitalism and socialism.”“Yes, I agree,” Wilson said. “You should stop here. You could go on forever. There are more reasons for evil than we can know. We have added to the discussion. The more we learned, the more we saw a new point of view. For me, I think we have done what we can.”“Yes, I agree,” Bonhoeffer said.“How about you, Sigmund and you Fritz?” I asked.“I’m ready to give it up,” Freud said.“Me too,” Nietzsche agreed.“So let me summarize,” I said.“No,” Wagner said. “I’ve had enough of this evil talk. The spirit world is calling us back. We only have so much time to be here. We are leaving.”ViennaAfter the convocation, we left Cesky-Krumlov in a car with Henry (the stepfather of the groom) and Susan, the groom’s mother. We drove in the rented Audi on a variety of roads from small highways to large eight-lane autobahns, through rolling hills bordered by forests and farms. We noticed that when we crossed the Czech/Austrian border that the roads improved.We stayed in a tourist apartment just off Vienna’s Ringstrasse. The “Ring” is a road that encompasses Vienna’s center where its major historic palaces, cathedrals, museums and universities are located. This is another UNESCO World Heritage Site.The buildings appeared to me to all be some version of Greco-Roman architecture, but my knowledge of architecture is limited. Brochures say that several styles are represented here, neo-romantic, neo-attic, Flemish Gothic, neo-renaissance and neo-baroque. I’m sure I left out a neo-style, but all were faced with granite, most had columns and statues carved into them.The building courtyards were now public parks landscaped with flowers, trees and grass. Every aspect of the buildings and parks were clean and well-tended.The buildings are grand but the Ringstrasse was amazing. It was a wide boulevard with a park in the middle. Outside the ring was another large street paralleling the ring’s circle. It was for mass transit vehicles and industrial delivery vehicles.All of this was built around the same time Ludwig was indulging himself building castles in Bavaria.The Ring was built on what had been the Vienna city wall moat and berm fortification over 500 meters wide. When Emperor Franz Joseph ordered the construction of the Ringstrasse in 1857, it was to be a remodeling of Vienna much like Napoleon’s rebuilding of Paris.Our apartment was a street off the Ring. It came with two bicycles. We didn’t know it when we rented it, but these bicycles were the apartment’s best asset. Vienna is very bicycle-friendly. It is mostly flat. The park in the middle of the Ringstrasse had bicycle paths. We went everywhere on these bikes. And when we needed to get somewhere quickly we loved using Vienna’s subway system.Vienna has taken advantage of the now locked and dammed Danube River that runs through the cities business district. They have expanded Vienna University to what once was a Danube flood plain. The University’s buildings are cutting edge architecture designed by architects from all over the world.The parks in and around the Ringstrasse have statues of notables, Goethe, Schiller, Maria Theresa, Prince Eugene, Richard Strauss among others.One of Vienna’s greatest citizens is striking by the absence of his statue, Freud. In fact, it was not until the 1970’s when Austria’s ambassador to the U.S. heard from so many people about their interest in Freud, that Vienna began to make plans for a Freud museum at Berggasse 19, Freud’s residence for forty-seven years. The Father of Psychoanalysis was not even awarded full professorship in the University until seventeen years after he applied.London gladly helped Anna Freud establish a Freud museum there long before the one in Vienna. Because of this Viennese snub, Anna only allowed a few of Freud’s possessions to be housed at Berggasse 19.I went there to visit. The address is on a hill slopping toward the river. The entrance is unremarkable. I entered the front door and saw a line of people formed on the stairs to the second floor. I waited my turn. When it came, I paid my ten Euros and was allowed inside this sparsely decorated space of mostly empty walls and floors, only a few bits of furniture. There was a small theatre room with wooden benches. Inside, a movie-loop played a twenty-minute film documentary of Freud’s life and family.I left disappointed, walked up the street to find a tiny park, about two acres with a barely visible sign engraved in a large granite boulder with the words Freud Park. It is adjacent to a much bigger, much better-known park, Votivpark. I would imagine that most Viennese don’t know Freud Park exists. I guess Freud should not feel too slighted by Austria because they inscribed his likeness on paper currency in the 1980s worth than about $4.50, today about $10.00.As I mentioned earlier two of the best aspects of Vienna are the prolific flat bike paths and the Danube (yes, its blue) River. We took a bike ride alongside the river some five miles and were greeted with some of the most beautiful public art/graffiti I had ever seen. These giant paintings adorned walls and bridge abutments. Metal sculptures dotted the path. We had lunch on a boat/restaurant and biked home taking photos of some of this amazing art.Our Fourth ConclaveOur illustrious convocation of minds reconvened under a small grove of about six trees in Freud Park. No light came to the ground among these trees, so the ground was bare. Six wooden folding chairs formed a circle. We sat as before, Wagner and Wilson on either side of me, Nietzsche opposite me with Freud between him and Wilson and Bonhoeffer between Wagner and Nietzsche.“Our accommodations keep going downhill,” Wagner observed.“Yes, they do,” I agreed. “But this is a great step above where we will meet next time, in Prague.”“I want to thank you, David, for bringing us here,” Freud said. “This spot used to be a hotel. My wife and I stayed there when we moved to Vienna looking for a home. And I want to thank you for acknowledging my contribution to the study of human nature.”“I like these light aluminum tall-backed plastic mesh chairs you have for us, David,” Bonhoeffer said. “We didn’t have such chairs in my day.”“Well, I should hope that science would add comfort with time,” Wagner said, his eyes drawn to a young boy playing a guitar and singing, an empty hat resting on the ground in front of him, and with his girlfriend sitting next to him staring adoringly at him and thanking passers-by who left coins in his hat.“That could be you in your next life, Richard,” Nietzsche said. “He sings and plays as badly as you did.”“But I would never sing someone else’s songs,” Wagner replied. “My music would gain fame wherever it was heard.”A police car, sirens blaring, drove by the park.“Your bombastic music would be noticed like the sound of that police car.”“Enough bickering,” I said. “We are here today to hear what Sigmund has to say about how the contagion of evil spreads. He wrote a book called Civilization and Its Discontents. Surely he has something to say on the subject.”“Actually, I don’t have much to say in that book on evil,” Sigmund said. “That book was about how the natural instincts of individuals collide with the needs of the community. I pose a dialectic tension between the individual and the collective that is never resolved. Sometimes, when the community requires individuals to repress their impulses to conform to the needs of others, these individuals develop neuroses.”A frisbee, followed by a golden retriever, fell a few feet from our circle. The dog pounced, picked it up and returned to his handler in the green grass of the adjacent park.“Come on Sigmund, can’t you say it simpler than that?” Nietzsche said. “What you mean is that when people want to fuck and nobody will fuck them, they eventually go crazy. Isn’t that what you mean?”“Yes, that is what I meant at first,” Freud said, pulling a cigar from inside his coat. “But I now think that our instinct extends beyond sexual reproduction. It has to do with the desire to create and that is opposed by another instinctive drive, the desire to destroy. How else, other than this instinctive desire to destroy, do you explain World Wars I and II?”“So you think evil lies in the heart of man,” Bonhoeffer said, “but you would rather call it instinct because you are a man of science. Is that your best shot?”“Well, I’m an atheist. Is that why you are attacking me, Dietrich?” Freud said lighting his cigar and blowing smoke.“No, it’s because you are a Jew,” Wagner said, “who has no right to speak about such important matters.”“Yes, he does,” I said. “Sigmund had had more influence on the world of ideas and literature than any of us here. Your hatred, Richard, is evil and I understand that you are infected by this disease. You are a prime example of how early childhood trauma can create a character disorder as a defense. Guilt and other neurotic defenses such as repression of instincts are the price we pay to live in society with others. When the price is too high, we become bitter, mean and angry. You could argue that the moral oppression of the Victorian era created the evil of the world wars.“Religion is a tool of society to force repression and guilt on individuals in order to curb our innate impulses. Sigmund says life’s purpose is to pursue pleasure. There is no higher purpose. And we will always be thwarted in this endeavor by the fact that we get sick and die. Nature destroys and erodes whatever we build and others won’t tolerate our lascivious desires.”“In other words, life sucks,” Nietzsche said, pulling, pulling his blanket up around his chin.“Yes,” Bonhoeffer said. “Life does suck if all its about is pleasing yourself. And yes, I agree with both you, Fritz and Sigmund, that the pursuit of personal happiness and self-satisfaction will inevitably bring misery.” He pulled off his glasses and began to clean them with his shirt. “Sigmund, look at your affair with Mina, your sister-in-law, and Richard, did all your acclaim and success bring you happiness? No, you simply wanted more. And Cosmina, the wife you stole from your best friend, became your tormentor, not the refuge and muse you had hoped for.“I agree happiness is an illusion and a life chasing it is misery. But what about meaning, participating in something that transcends all of us.”“But there is no God,” Nietzsche said.“That’s what you believe,” Bonhoeffer said, “and I cannot prove otherwise, but emotions are contagious. Human beings can share a spirit. We can pursue a goal together to bring peace, justice and freedom to humankind. We don’t have to keep chasing the tail of personal happiness.”“Sigmund, I went to your old home in Vienna today, Berggasse 19,” I said. “You would like what they are doing with the place. It costs ten euros to get in. When I arrived twenty people stood on the stairs to the second floor waiting for the door to Apartment #5 to open. When it did, the docent invited five people inside. The rest remained reverently standing on the stairs in silence. It was as if we were waiting to get to go inside the tomb of Jesus.“Once inside and ten euros paid, I entered rooms empty of furniture with, and you won’t believe this Sigmund, with exhibits of women who were supposedly empowered and inspired by you and the psychoanalytic movement. In addition to these exhibits, someone drew a timeline on the wall up the stairs depicting the women’s rights movement and the particular women who were part of the inner circle of psychoanalysis.“Can you believe that? You, a liberator of women. You, who accused women of being inferior to men and of suffering from penis envy and having a desire to castrate men, you are a hero of women’s liberation.“Anyway, that’s how they portray you at the museum. Oh, they play some of your home movies. The thing I like most about you, Sigmund, is that you loved your dogs. They were mostly chows. When you moved to London, you may remember, the British quarantined Lün, your lost dog, for six months and you visited her in quarantine every chance you had. That’s what I admire most about you.“Back to Berggasse 19, the Austrian Prime Minister in the 1970’s was criticized for not giving you the recognition that you deserved. When he returned home, he sponsored legislation for the state to buy your old home and create the museum. Now they are making a fortune on pilgrims who came to see your home and office. I went on a Tuesday. I would guess a thousand people a day visit. And there is nothing really there. All your artifacts are in a museum in London, not here. But people still come. That is how powerful your legend remains.“And here we are in a park named for you, three blocks from your house and one block from a subway stop and still no grand statue, and you are much more important to world history and culture than Goethe and Schiller.”“David,” Wagner said, “sorry to interrupt your praise of this Jew, but as I listened to you I get the sense that you dislike dichotomies.”"Yes, I get that too," Nietzsche said pulling out his cigarette and lighting one. "But I think simple polarities like the Dionysian vs. the Apollonian are very illustrative and are useful in describing and persuading.""You have some theory that you developed with J. R. Newbrough about the third position that relates to dichotomies, don't you?” Wilson asked."Yes, I do," I said. I was nervous now that I was the focus. I stood and folded my arms feeling the need to back away. "And I think that using simplistic dualities is one of the best persuasive weapons of a demagogue. When we have two opposites, we tend to compare them looking for which one is the better of the two. We place them into our minds in an artificial competition, and we declare one side the winner. Should we choose Sparta and the order of that Apollonian world over Athens and its chaotic, emotional, Dionysian world?"Do we have to choose?” I stepped behind Wagner and looked at Freud. “Sigmund, your contemporary, Carl Jung, came up with this idea in his study of Heraclitus law. Heraclitus observed that when you put your foot in the water it displaced the water, but when you pulled out your foot, the water returned as if your foot had never been there. From this, he concluded that every proposition attracts its opposite. Your foot is the proposition, but it does not create a space in the water it displaces. When you lift it out, the opposing water or idea returns.”Nietzsche pushed a stick into the dirt and pulled it out leaving a hole in the dirt. He said, “It doesn’t work with terra firma.”“No,” I said. “This metaphor requires liquid.”“That’s one interpretation of Heraclitus Law,” Nietzsche said. “Another is that change is constant. Nothing is permanent.”“Give him a break,” Freud said. “He can spin his theory if he wants. You’ve spun yours and I have mine.”"The point is every idea attracts a ‘yes, but’,” I said. “And the debate between the dichotomous propositions is never resolved because both are true. And truth always contains both ideas. Thus, truth is a paradox."Demagogues, who want to perpetuate evil, create a dichotomy of ‘us’ and ‘them.' The ‘us,’ in this polarity, is always better than the ‘them.' Because they are better than, superior to, they must protect themselves from the invasion or the corruption that the ‘them' can do to the ‘us.’”Wagner interrupted and said, “Would you move somewhere else. I hate you talking to my back.”I moved behind my empty chair and continued, “Dichotomies draw a straightforward and definitive picture of a false reality. Reality is not simple, and it is rarely clear. Reality is complicated, and it always contains more than two parts. The ‘them' for the Nazis included, of course, Jews, but also the gypsies, the homosexuals, the mentally ill, mentally retarded and the non-white.”"They were purifying the race to create society for the ‘Ubermensch' and the super race,” Wagner said."Yes, they were trying to make everyone alike. The reality is that there are differences among us. There always will be. And yes, races may have some innate differences in addition to skin color. Certainly, men and women are different, and we can see how this dichotomy has been used to discriminate against women.”“Viva la difference,” Wagner said raising his pipe.I ignored him and continued, "And the reality is that individuals within race and color transcend the norms of race and sex. No one conforms to a stereotype, even one that has some validity. Differences exist inside commonalities."Why would Hitler not meet with Jessie Owens, the Negro Olympic medalist who defeated all comers of all races in the Munich Olympiad of 1936?”“Because he was inferior,” Wagner shouted taking a pull from his pipe.I ignored him again. "Owens proved that Hitler's dichotomy of ‘us' and ‘them' was false. Reality was more complicated than the Nazi version he sold to Germany. And what about the yellow people, the Japanese who were Hitler's allies? Another inconsistent fly in his simple ointment.”“Given time, he would have dealt with them too,” Wagner said.I continued my habit of ignoring him and said, "The use of dichotomies to simplify reality can be a very useful polemic tool. All dichotomies illustrate is that one thing is different than the other."My sister, Betsy, was born with Downs syndrome. I secretly sometimes wished she hadn't been born. I judged her life as a burden to me, my family and society. I didn't see how she contributed to me and the world, until her funeral. I thought I knew all of the significant people in her life, and I didn't expect her funeral to draw much of an audience. But I was surprised by the number of people who came that I didn't know, and by the people who spontaneously took the pulpit to eulogize her and speak of the contributions she gave to their lives.” As I listened tears came to my eyes."Betsy contributed to my life in ways I didn't, and perhaps still, don't understand. She taught me (or failed to teach me) patience. The burden I felt from my role as her caretaker was really more like a stabilizing anchor that kept me grounded. I felt a sense of pride from tending to her. And at her funeral, others described how she had contributed to their lives."She was different from me. That's all.” I said almost shouting. “Not better than or less than. The better than/less than temptation exists instinctively in all of us. It is our status gene that motivates us to improve and get better. But it is easily corrupted and manipulated. And when it is, it is a door for evil.""But what about the superior man?" Nietzsche asked, leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, lighted cigarette in his hand. "You must see him in your Jessie Owens, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Lao Tzu, Nelson Mandela…I could go on. You must admit that they exist and that all of them accepted and exploited their entitlements. One of the differences between them and Hitler was that they won, and he lost. All of them were ambitious. All of them, with perhaps the exception of Mandela, exploited their advantages for their benefit. And I expect Mandela did too; I just don't know that much about him. Historians haven't dug into his dirt much because he just died."What about them? Don't we need them? Don't we want them to have their mansions and their women? Don't they deserve their rewards Don't we want to raise more great men like them?""I notice you don't mention women?" Wilson said, scooting his chair back and away from Nietzsche."Yeah, you got me there. I never thought much of them. Okay, this is 2016, we should raise great women too.""Now, you are touching upon how I think demagogues sell evil to the masses," I said."I believe that they combine one more element," I said. "We've already talked about the Ubermensch promote inequality, then there’s how exclusively relative truth promotes evil. And we have shown how dichotomous thinking can become corrupted and simplify reality so that evil seems logical.""Yes," Wagner agreed. "Get to your point. What is the two other things that you believe are so bad?"“I will have to speak to that next time. We have to go now. Our next and last meeting place will be in the basement of Karel Boromesky Church, an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to St. Cyril Methodius in Prague. This was the place where the Germans slaughtered the Czech resistance fighters who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was the Hitler’s architect of the plan to exterminate the Jews. Because Czech workers were slowing their work pace as a silent protest against the German occupation, Heydrich was sent to govern Czechoslovakia. He ordered workers to increase their productivity and killed those who did not. He was called “Hangman Heydrich” and the “Butcher of Prague.”“Operation Anthropoid was launched from England to assassinate Heydrich and establish listening posts inside Czechoslovakia. Joseph Gabrick and Jan Kubis carried out his mission. By luck and accident, they accomplished Heydrich’s death, helped along by incompetent medical care.“Hitler ordered his SS troops to wade in blood to find Heydrich’s killers. Gabcik and Kubis were betrayed by one of their fellow paratroopers. They hid in this basement of St. Cyril’s Church and eventually were discovered, one killed and the other committed suicide. Hitler ordered the massacre of everyone, all 173 men in the village of Lidice and 52 women. He imprisoned 5,000 others.“When we meet there, you will see the bullet marks on the wall if you look carefully. There, we will witness the extraordinary legacy that came from these two men fighting evil and the horror that evil can create. We are adjourned.”PragueMarietta and I rode a TVC train from Vienna to Prague. It was a pleasant, comfortable ride. We left on time and arrived on time. Supposedly we were traveling at speeds of up to 150 MPH. That was not true all of the time. We could see the countryside passing by and in an August, that had more rain than usual. It was verdant and lush. Trees, wild daises and cow pastures were much of our view.We arrived in Prague and Rick Sieves Prague book warned us of taxi driver scams. He told us to walk two blocks from the station and there, we could expect a reasonable taxi driver who would offer a reasonable fare to our hotel.He was right. Just outside the station a driver asked if we needed a cab and quoted us a fare four times the fare Sieves had quoted. We went another block, found a taxi who charged us the correct fare. We were also warned about the Romas, a politically correct term for gypsies. They had been placed in Czechoslovakia in WWII by Hitler. He was planning to exterminate them but he never got to all of them. Sieve warned us to keep our eyes open for children creating distractions. We never saw any evidence of chicanery other than the expensive taxi driver.Prague is touted as the most beautiful city in Europe. It is definitely the city of towers. Vienna and Munich have as much public art and statues as Prague, but Prague’s urban architecture has some interesting post-modern buildings.Prague was not as easy to navigate as Munich or Vienna. The signage for the subways was often confusing to us. We couldn’t ride bicycles because the city was too hilly and cobblestoned. The food was surprisingly good. We had our best European meal in Prague, one clear night in a restaurant overlooking the city.Remember the small Volga River in Cesky-Krumlov, a bigger version of the same river was here. At Prague, there were river locks to aid industrial trade. Most boats we saw were tourist’s boats allowing visitors a different perspective on the city.Prague also considered itself the, or one of the, cultural centers of Europe. We went to an opera there, Aida. I wanted to have some version of an opera experience because I wanted to understand the genius of Wagner better. I got through the second act. The rest was so predictable. The woman in the role of Aida was too old to make her believable.We went to the Jewish cemetery and museum. This was the most visited museum in Prague. Hundreds of people milled about like ants. Again, people seemed fascinated by the consequences of oppression.This is the place where the protestant reformation started long before Martin Luther. Jon Hus (1395-1415) was the inspiration for the Hussite Rebellion also knowns as the Bohemian Reformation. John Hus and his followers believed that God’s forgiveness came through repentance, not by paying money to the church; that the sacrament of communion might be administered by laity as well as clergy. Clergy did not speak for God, and the Pope had no right to take up the sword in the name of Christ.The Pope condemned him and eventually tricked him, captured and executed him. The Hussite Wars followed from 1419-1434. The followers of Jon Hus won and were allowed to worship their version of the Christian faith in peace. They defeated all of the crusaders against them.A statue of Hus stands in the middle of the city.Our hotel was up a hill about a block and a half from Prague Castle, the largest ancient castle in the world. It attracts more than 1.8 million visitors per year and it is the home and place of business of the Czech President. Inside the confines of the castle grounds, there are four Cathedrals.Among the reasons people come here is to see the Czech crown jewels. We didn’t bother. The Palace garden and an old gnarled tree fascinated me more than anything else in Prague.The Final ConclaveOn our third day in Prague I reconvened our imaginary convocation on evil in the dark dark basement of St. Cyril’s Methodius Church. The place where the Nazis killed Heydrich’s assassins.“Today we meet at the St. Cyril’s Greek Orthodox Melodious and Methodius Church in Prague,” I said. “The place where seven Czechoslovakian resistance fighters died after assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, the man the Czech’s called the ‘hangman’ and the ‘Butcher of Prague.’ He was the number two man in the Nazi hierarchy after Hitler and he was the only person in the Nazi leadership that fit the Aryan model, blond, handsome, six-foot four and fiercely anti-Semitic.“He took over the government of Czechoslovakia, because this area was the most productive industrialized area in Europe. The Nazis planned to produce their armaments in this country. Yet, the workers were slow-walking production. Heydrich took over Czechoslovakia, executed slow workers and anyone who protested innocence for even a parking ticket and hence, production increased. The tanks started pouring out of Czech factories.“Heydrich was the architect of the holocaust. He was evil personified.“We sit on our usual circle in wooden church chairs in this dark dungeon, lighted only by the light that can penetrate the stained-glass windows because here is where Nazi soldiers made martyrs of the Czechoslovakian paratroopers that assassinated Heydrich on May 27, 1942. You can see the bullet holes in the wall around the sanctuary and in the church ceiling if you look carefully.”“You were right, our accommodations have steadily deteriorated since Neuschwanstein Castle,” Wagner said. “We have the same six wooden folding chairs. We are sitting like we were last time, but the only natural light we have comes from a slit in the concrete wall and the other light is so dim you can barely read the plaques on the wall about these so-called heroes.”“Though it is a bit cold in this dungeon,” Nietzsche said, “I feel at home here in the Czech Republic, the only atheist country I know of. Here they got the message. God is dead.”“We are meeting here for you Dietrich. These men fought evil as you suggest we all should do. They murdered an evil man as you tried to do, but failed.”“Yes, they did, Dietrich,” Nietzsche said. “And what good did that do. Other evil men replaced him. And Hitler killed thousands of people to punish the Czechs for letting this happen. He wiped out two villages, bulldozed their cemeteries and poured salt on their land so nothing could grow there. Isn’t that what fighting evil does, create more evil?”“Perhaps,” Bonhoeffer answered. “But I prefer that to living a life simply for self-gratification, as you and Sigmund suggest, and you even admit that in the end, it all means nothing.“I believe my life meant something. Life is not about pleasure. Life is about the story your life creates.”“Yes, and you are here today, Dietrich, because of your compelling story,” I said. “The legend from your life is that you gladly gave your life for your service to God and your fight against the evil of the Nazis.”“Well, thank you,” he replied slightly bowing his head to me. “I suppose that is the legend and there is some truth to it. ‘Gladly’ may not describe all my feelings, but yes, I did choose to risk my life knowing that I might die.”“Isn’t this just vanity, like Hitler’s vanity,” Wagner said, pulling out his pipe. “Your resistance to him just empowered him and he became even more entitled to kill and oppress because he had to protect this Fatherland from the likes of you.”“Don’t smoke in the church, Richard,” I said.He put his pipe back in his jacket.“Richard, you could see it that way,” Dietrich answered. “But I like to see myself as one of the ants in my ant clan to use E.O.’s metaphor. We as a clan, together, fought evil. I was one of the many who sacrificed in this fight. I am proud of my legacy. Are you Fritz or are you Sigmund?”“Well yes, I am,” Freud answered pulling out his cigar.I glared at him and his cigar and he said, “I won’t light it here. I enjoy chewing on it and my ideas are my legacy.”“And your secrets are as well,” Bonhoeffer said. “And the children you neglected, except for your daughter Anna. And look what you did to her. She never married. She gave her life to extending your reach, expanding your ideas, and taking care of you. She had no life of her own. You consumed her. This is also your legacy. Are you proud of that?”“That’s none of your business,” Sigmund replied.“Perhaps not my business alone,” Bonhoeffer replied, “But it is the business of your disciples. They worship you. You heard what David said about the people standing reverently on the steps to your apartment simply to see inside and inside there was really nothing much of you to see there. Don’t these people have a right to know if your so-called examined life was worth living, your life in pursuit of pleasure, responding to your libido and managing the conflict of your desires with your conscience. How did that work for you?”“I never said I was happy,” Sigmund said. “I agree with Fritz that life inevitably is suffering. Yes, I died of cancer, miserable. That’s life.”People began to enter the church and wander about looking at the bullet marks and commemorative plaques.“That’s not all life has to be,” Wilson said. “It seems to me that you, Sigmund and you, Fritz, emphasized what Jung would call the animus aspect of life, the ambition, drive, lust, the penetrating, seed-planting part of life. But you neglect to see that the creative life force has another instinct other than the lustful desire to plant, possess or conquer. There is the desire to nurture, tend and care for.“David earlier suggested that we have many innate instincts and that they can work together in balance. It is in this balance that we find real gratification. Dietrich, here, was playing out this other instinct. He was the mother-bear protecting his cubs, and he tells us that though this was not pleasurable, it provided him meaning. His religious myths and now, his own legend that add to these myths, make the same point. Life in the service of something beyond the pleasure principle gives us meaning and purpose.“When we raise a child and the child dies at a young age before we do, we tend to feel a significant loss. But this is not logical. The child was so much trouble. Now that she is gone, our life logistics are much easier, but life is not easier for us, because we have lost some of our sense of purpose.”“Yes, that’s exactly how I see it,” Bonhoeffer said raising his voice and slapping his thighs for emphasis.“David, you never asked me how I feel about my legacy,” Wagner said.“Okay, what about your legacy?” I asked and yawned.“I’m proud of my music, my operas. They’ve inspired millions. And they inspired Hitler and if he had prevailed in WWII, the victor would have written history and he would have killed or moved all of the Jews to Madagascar as he planned. And we would be breeding superior human beings.”“You can be proud of your music, Richard,” Freud said, “But your ideas make me sick.”“It is about time you expressed some real emotion about anti-Semitism,” I said.“Yes,” Bonhoeffer said. “The music confuses us. It is so amazing that we think a genius who can produce such beauty and art must also be brilliant and a master at all other things. Donald Trump made billions, so people believe he would make a great president. That’s the fallacy. A genius at one thing does not make a genius at all things.”“I wonder what Wagner’s music would sound like in this church. Somehow I don’t think it would be appreciated here.” Bonhoeffer said.“So yes, Richard has his blind spots and is stupid about people and governments,” Nietzsche said. “But his music, his music, listening to music was the only time I felt at peace with myself and life.”“And that’s because in music you found balance and harmony,” Wilson said.“Yes, that’s exactly right,” Nietzsche said. “I felt like I was part of something more than myself that was carrying me with it, supporting me, inviting me to join and I merged into this something.”“It is exactly this something that makes our lives matter,” Bonhoeffer said. “I call it God and I see God’s spirit expressed in stories. I see it in the story of the paratroopers who killed Heydrich. I see it in Bible stories, in stories of Jesus. It is this spirit that I want to join. It is in the harmony of music, the peace that can be among people who can apologize and forgive, and in the love of a parent for a child or a friend for a friend. I want to share in this spirit and when an evil like a Hitler or a Heydrich or a Trump presents itself, it inspires a passion in me. It invites me into a holy place and I did accept that invitation gladly and I hope I added another story that reflects this spirit.”“But look how many people died because of these foolish paratroopers,” Wagner said.“Yes, but look at the story their deaths created,” Bonhoeffer said. “Look at the people around us in the crypt today reading about the paratrooper’s love of country and their desire to free their people. Their deaths meant something.”“And Dietrich, yours did as well,” I said.“I hope so,” he replied. “I’d like to think so. My point is a simple one. Yes, life is full of suffering like you Fritz, Sigmund and Buddha say, but you have to have a reason for your suffering. Running away from your suffering into adulation, wealth, lust or other pleasures will lead to more misery. Our suffering must have a reason, a purpose. Sigmund, your reason or purpose was to discover the dynamics of human nature. Fritz, yours was to show how silly bourgeois reality was. Richard, your constructive purpose was to share your music with the world. But none of us avoided life’s sufferings. Life means more when we have a purpose that transcends ourselves and joins with a set of eternal spiritual values. That’s my point.”“I’m tired of all this,” Wagner said. “Get to your theory of evil. So far you blame it on the idea of an Ubermensch. I don’t see why, but you do. Something about inequality and empowering one person at the expense of the community. But Jesus was an Ubermensch, hey Dietrich. Isn’t that right? That’s your first point. What was your second point?”Some of the people walking about began to form an observing circle around us.“It was that truth is a paradox,” Wilson said. “It can be absolute and it can be relative. And relative truth without the balance of absolute truth can have us disregard reality and give up on science and the search for truth.”“The third point,” Bonhoeffer said, “had to do with two-category thinking, false polarities that simplified reality and encourage quick easy answers to difficult complex problems, making the shallow ideas of a demagogue seem reasonable.”I was uncomfortable again with the focus turned to me. I stood and bumped into one of the observers. I put my hands on the back of my chair, coughed to clear my dry throat, excused myself to the observer and said, “I have more to say on those three points before I get to my last idea. The idea that some people are superior to others cuts against my democratic southern roots.“You, Richard and Fritz, promoted this idea. You both thought that you were such men and were entitled to ignore social conventions. Hitler grabbed this theme and pretended that he was the best of his generation. He used your idea that an Ubermensch, such as he, deserved worship. This was how he built his cult. Trump is doing the same thing right now as I write this in his campaign to President. The problem is if there are superior people, there must be inferior ones.”I felt faint. My stomach was bloated. I held on tight to my chair and continued, "It is, what was that word, Quatsch? We are all different, yes. But no one is superior. Some are better suited for some roles than others. My sister, Betsy, was not suited for the role of President. But she did a good job busing tables at Pizza Hut. She ennobled many people who reached out and helped her. Helping her, helped them.”“David, you look pale. Are you okay?” Wilson asked.I began to slur my words. “No, I don’t feel well, but I want to push through this if I can,” I said.“I think he has what Mexicans call tourista,” Wagner said and laughed. “Don’t spoil the company with gas. We are in an enclosed space and many of the people here can still smell.”“I’ll try to hold on.” I stood straight trying to look strong and solid and continued. “Many people could become a great President. No one expected Abraham Lincoln to become such a great man. When he ran for President, he didn't want to free the slaves. He didn't believe that Negroes were equal to Caucasians. He was often clinically depressed. He had many flaws. He was certainly not a Ubermensch. But the events of history, a diverse cabinet of advisors, some great speeches, and some wise decisions made him a legend and one of our greatest Presidents. And so did the spirit of American's people. Our community has a way of helping our leaders be better. Our nation's critics, the opposing party, the press, and the values of our democracy inspire our leaders to do well.”I almost lost my balance. One of the observers caught me. I reached for and found the top of my chair, I stabilized myself and continued. "It is not a superman that makes a culture better. It is a community of people who respect each other and have the courage and faith to work together. This spirit that transcends any one person is what builds a better society. It is the culture’s traditions that value opposition and dissent."Demagogues, like Hitler and Trump, sell themselves as superior men. A frightened public long for a champion to make them safe. When we, as a collective, are frightened and angry, we want someone who can do the impossible, a superior man. Our fears and insecurities undermine our individual and collective confidence. We want a simple, quick fix, the hero who will solve all our problems."The myth of the Ubermensch, the superman, who doesn't exist, some man who could only be a god, that myth is what demagogues sell.”I belched a loud burp and felt much better and I continued, "There is no easy solution to the culture wars that we are fighting in this century. The West's view of women is so divergent from so much of the world. When you mess with the roles of the sexes and the traditions of another culture, there will be repercussions. Society cannot completely control or contain its crazies.”With the strength I got from my belch, I began walking about the circle speaking, the observers made space for me. "In the U.S., rogue police officers will execute black people handcuffed in police cars. Crazy Black people will kill white police officers. Racists, radical white people will blow up a federal building. Deranged radical Muslims will be manipulated to become suicide bombers and a democratic process that makes a place for everyone and respects the dignity of every person will be attacked.”I felt the urge to vomit and I took my seat hoping that that might help."We can't stop this with an army. No superman can protect us. We don't need leaders who believe they have a quick answer. We need a leader to inspire our courage and our faith in the face of the random, senseless violence that comes from individuals who are alienated, lost and easily manipulated. We need societal paradigms that do not depend on one particular person. We need to believe in our community.""That's a sermon, David," Bonhoeffer said."I don't think that political slogans will be made of someone saying ‘reality is complex,’ and ‘truth is a paradox’," Nietzsche said, "So, you think my myth of Ubermensch created evil? Dietrich, you are selling Jesus. What's the difference? He was an Ubermensch.""No," Bonhoeffer said. "Christ is clearly a mythical figure, the son of God who experienced the human condition. Christ was born when Jesus died. It was the Jews who followed Jesus that built the legend. It is the myth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, which I worship. I don't worship Jesus, the man. We're not even sure Jesus, the man, knew a woman in the biblical sense. And if he did, why didn't he marry her. My version of superman would include a father, a husband, a man who navigated human relationships. I'm not so impressed by Jesus, the man.""But what about his miracles and his ascending into heaven?" Wagner asked. "Surely these are the acts of a superman. Jesus performed miracles. You’re a minister and what you are saying is very disconcerting to my faith. Don’t you agree?" he asked turning to the observers.“We are Czechs. Most of us don’t believe in God,” one of them said."I'm sorry about that, Richard,” Dietrich said, “but in the time of Jesus, Rabbis were rock stars, just like you were in your day. Spiritual leaders vied for public support. You couldn't be a star teacher in Palestine at that point unless you came with a life story that included miracles."They were sales people just like we are. They hawked their philosophy just like we sell cars. We sell cars with sexy women. They sold ideas with miracles. Hot women don't make cars great, and Jesus didn't make supernatural miracles. He died. And I don't believe his body rose from the dead.”Wagner moaned, leaned forward and put his head in his hands."I think Peter and his fellow Jews knew that they had a good thing in their version of Jesus's story. They added some architectural do-dads, some miracles for appeal to sell the message because that's the only way they could sell it at that time.""But you even say that you want to be like Jesus," Wagner said straightening up looking as if he were imploring Bonhoeffer to change his mind. "Aren't you challenging yourself and other Christians to be Ubermensch's, just like Hitler did?"God, I hope not. I love the Christian message. And I want to be selfless and find my fulfillment in sacrificing for the good of others. But Christians sell Christ as a perfect being, the son of God.""Aren't we all the sons and daughters of God?" Wagner asked."Yes, but none of us is perfect," Bonhoeffer said looking about at our audience as if preparing to deliver a sermon. "The early Christian church addressed this Ubermensch idea that we all can be Jesus's perfect children of God. And they called this the Gnostic Fallacy and said that Jesus sacrificed his life so that we could be ourselves, not Jesus. We are not Avatars. We all have flaws and we all sin and make mistakes. I’ve made my share.” He looked down at the ground and continued. “The Crucifixion was the sacrifice of Jesus made for our sins to be forgiven. So no, no one can be Jesus Christ. There is no need for that. We are free to be our flawed selves, unique and similar. This is what I believe. This I why I am a Christian. Inside the paradigm, I can be myself, and yet, Christ challenges me to follow the path of love, of standing for good against evil even if it costs my life. And this is where I find meaning for my existence. I'm a Christian because I believe that love, compassion, regret for the hurt we cause others and faith that there is order to the universe and a purpose for human life and that we find meaning for our lives by doing good, serving others, and fighting evil. I believe in this path for myself, and my version of Christianity sells this as the best path for all of us. That does not mean to me that an atheist can't follow this path or a person of any other religion isn't following this path. They may be unaware that they are who I consider to be Christian, but they may be on the same path as I was."No one noticed how sick I was, because they were so taken by Bonhoeffer’s surprising comments about his religious beliefs. He continued on, thank God. I needed this break."You know," Nietzsche said. "Your sermon is only a little bit different from my sermon, follow your bliss, let your unique desires take you where they will. You will make a mess, but you will learn from your mess, and in the end, perhaps at your death, you will understand and discover some reason for it all. But I didn't say that last part, but that's what you are saying. Right, Dietrich?""Not exactly, but there is a resemblance.""So, David, what about your other idea about where societal evil comes from?" Wilson asked. "So, you got relativist truth as a source, dichotomous thinking as another and now the myth of the Ubermensch. What's next?Startled and knowing that my restraint would not hold much longer, I bolted into my finish. "It is the cartoon myth that we sell to children where there is a damsel in distress who can't pay the rent, a landlord who will hurt her if she doesn't, and a hero who rescues her and pays the rent This is essentially the myth of Dionysius and Ariadne. This is an elaborate myth with a Minotaur for Ariadne's brother, an enigmatic labyrinth in which it starts and to which it returns, a circle with twisting paths."Ariadne is the damsel. She appeals to a man, Theseus, to help her. He rescues her. And for his trouble, Ariadne's agrees to marry him. Theseus abandons Ariadne, and she is again saved, this time, by a god, Dionysus. They wed, uniting the human and the divine in an ecstatic union.""This was my religion," Nietzsche said pulling his blanket up under his arms. "I used this myth as a template for my life. I wrote about it directly in many of my treatises and indirectly in everything I wrote. Just as Christ is Dietrich's understanding of how the divine and the human come together, this story is mine."I stood again and held tightly to the top of my chair. "And I believe it is the source of evil," I said. "First of all, we aren't in life's labyrinth as just one man or one woman or one crazy brother that is raping his sister. We live in community with many people. The woman may experience distress, but she is not helpless. She has a voice. She can use it. She has many allies, not just one. She has her own wit and imagination. She can use her creativity to put together a plan of liberation. This is the second flaw of this myth, the first one being that we are isolated individuals. We are rarely completely helpless victims."The third flaw in the myth is that the hero is the only one able to save her and that for his sacrifice and for the risks he takes, he is entitled from this point forward to the obedience, status and the fulfillment of his every desire from the damsel. This is similar to the suicide bombers myth that because of his sacrifice he will be entitled to eighty virgins who will serve his every need in heaven."We sell this myth to high school quarterbacks, to potential CEO's, to politicians, to aspiring real estate moguls, to hopeful Nobel prize winners. Once they reach the status of hero, no one has to follow the rules. Once the husband rescues the wife from economic distress, he is entitled to her obedience, gratitude, and service.”I began to take quick steps around the circled chairs hoping that would help me push back the flood of what was coming. The observers made way for me, sensing my distress."It is this assumed heroes pass, which if we rescue the damsel or save the world, we get what we want forever, this prize of the hero, that destroys our souls."There is no place where kindness isn't necessary or where telling the truth is not required. There is no place where we are finished with our character work. Life's garden will always need tending. There will always be weeds to pull, and when others do the gardening for us, all the real benefits go to them, and our souls begin to deteriorate."This is the evil myth of the demagogues; where they flatter you by saying that you too, can be a hero like them, privileged and free to have your own gardener. Just as they deserve their free pass to avoid human pain, you do too. You don't have to worry about the truth. It doesn't exist anyway. It's relative. Choices are always on a polarity. It’s one or the other. Reality is simple. Just pick the one you want. Oh, to be a hero, there are dues to pay. You must first save the damsel. But once you have, life is good. The people you helped owe you for life, and they will be glad to pay. The demagogue tells his followers that once they achieve hero status, people will adore them as their hero too, like you adore me. Just find the simple, obvious enemy. It is them, those with a different skin color, those who follow a different faith, those who don't think like we do, those who are different than us. Follow me, your Ubermensch. Kill for me. And you will be a hero too."This is how I think demagogues sell evil. I’m leaving now. We are finished.” I ran to the closest public toilet and my body exploded there.After the convocation in St. Cyril’s Church, we were there two more days. We had massages for our backs. We toured a park next to an art museum.Evil Comes to VisitThe last night we had another fine dinner. We came home, packed and fell into bed. There was something about the lock on our door that we didn’t understand. We thought the door automatically locked when we were inside with the door closed. We didn’t understand what the bellman meant when he said, “Turn the key and leave it in the door.”The next day we awoke in plenty of time to get to the airport. We were packed and after a shower, we were ready to walk out the door. But Marietta couldn’t find her purse, actually two purses, one empty and one with money, phone and two credit cards. We turned the room upside down. I went outside to tell the maid to look for Marietta’s purse. She said she found two purses under some hall furniture. She turned them in at the desk downstairs. It was clear, now, someone had opened our door while we slept, walked in our room in the middle of the night, grabbed two purses that hung on the closet door and left.The purses were empty, but our passports were still with us. We boarded our plane and left. A few days later, Marietta received a letter from a stranger in New Jersey with her driver’s license enclosed. The letter said they found it next to a curb on a Prague street.I’ve been listening to Leonard Cohen of late. He believed that evil is a force that is forever with us. And that great evil inspires great sacrifice for good, like the sacrifice those two Czech soldiers made for their country and the sacrifice of Bonhoeffer for his God and his country against evil. For Cohen, good and evil are in a dance together. One doesn’t exist without the other and the dance is a constant cycle. For him, there is no human moral progress.Perhaps that’s true. But I am a son of the Enlightenment and I believe we can learn about natural human laws of justice and fairness that are born inside all of us.I believe the human moral world is struggling to keep pace with the potential destructive forces inherent in our technology. Globally, in spite of terrorism and our fears, less people are killing people. Last century fellow humans killed millions and millions of other fellow humans.Much less of that is happening now. Look at how we treat the mentally ill or people with special needs. Think about the words we once used to describe them. Consider how much kinder our clinical language is now. Consider the safety net that has been created in Europe and America.Consider how the use of death penalty is declining in the world.We are getting better. We must get better because our potential for destroying each other with nuclear bombs or nuclear disasters or pollution or biological warfare is getting more and more dangerous.As a species, in order to contain these forces, we must become kinder, more tolerant, more just and more moral.I believe learning how demagogues use evil and exposing their tricks can be a step in that direction.

Hrumphing and Traveling Again: This Time to Nantucket

Chapter One

Hrumph again, I’m traveling. Last time Marietta had the meltdown before we left. This time I did. We are going to Nantucket, the place where legends are made. Ship captains, whales, sailboats, 75º high summer temperatures, and the destination of our first successful romantic trip sixteen years ago.

And there is the rub. That trip was made by a thirty nine year old man and woman. We were becalmed in a sailboat there, a once every ten year experience for unfortunate sailors we were told, two newly minted lovers not caring where they were, just glad to be together. We walked together on a golf course while I drove golf balls into the fog and we magically walked into the fog to find them together. Marietta achieved her goal of getting me pie-eyed drunk, me a person who rarely has wine or beer with dinner. We rode bicycles all over town and walked along empty beaches together. When we were becalmed in the sailboat, we waited for rescue for an hour and had to be towed in. But that didn’t matter to us then because we were together. It sounds rather mundane now, but it created for us great memories and was part of a super glue that has held us together for these last sixteen years.

Sixteen years ago I brought along with me to Nantucket a strong sex drive, hunger for a woman’s acceptance, good legs, a strong back and a smaller prostate. This time I needed Viagra and forgot it. My foot hurts when I walk. I left my golf clubs and tennis rackets at home. I wouldn’t dare go out in a sailboat again. What am I doing but coming back to Nantucket to ruin our memories, to mess with the magic spell cast upon our “once-upon-a-time,” to mix the cruel reality of getting old with the wonder and optimism of upward mobility of the late thirties. As I write this, contemplating this trip, this all feels like a lose/lose proposition to me. I can see my wife’s disappointed face contrasting our 55-year-old moments with our late thirties first kiss time.

I can’t stand to disappoint her. I have finally found marital bliss after two failed marriages. Marietta, my third wife, seems to really love me. I’m not sure why. I think one of the reasons was the magic we shared on Nantucket and here we are about to shatter those youthful memories with senior moments of “I can’t get on the bike because of my bulging prostate.” “Sailing? No, been there. Becalmed once. Not again.” “Want to run on the beach? No, I can barely walk.” “Make whoopee? Let me call my doctor for a script. I am especially intimidated by the whoopee.”

So here we are now. The first leg of our flight had deposited us in the Providence, Rhode Island airport among fellow travelers right out of Canterbury Tales, each with their traveling misadventures. One guy has lost one of his three bags, the one containing his cell phone and palm pilot. Then there is the desperate, thin, blond, athletic mother with firm upper arms, with her infant and two other children under four and their nanny. She can’t get her entourage on the overbooked flight. With tears in her eyes she pleads to us and the other passengers to give up five seats on the flight so that she and her children won’t have to take the next plane.Her pleading voice increases the tension in an already tense waiting area. She lays the guilt on thickly as she please with all the passengers who checked in before here. The children are now yelling, too. The four-year-old girl wants to torment the baby. The nanny yells trying to protect the baby. The three-year-old wants to push the baggage cart and race it down the airport hall. The mother constantly pushes her disgust and anger on to Cape Air staff, young college-aged boys right out of the 1980s TV show Wings. Oh sweet memories are made of this?!

There is another blond woman with two children. The difference is that this woman has tickets to board our plane and a husband present. She also has a Jack Russell terrier with arthritis, a bird, complete with cage, five small trees that mimic a children’s drawing of a tree—a stick with a green ball at the top, a hard plastic cage with a rabbit inside. Each of her two boys has his own exotic lizard with orange markings on the bottom of their necks, complete with identical carrying cases along with two pet crabs. The coupled mother tries to commiserate with the damsel in distress mother as she continues her assault on the airplane ticket boy she calls “Jason.”“Well how did you get on the plane?” she asked of the first mother. “We had reserved five seats and we got here just after you did.” Then they both turned and looked at Jason who had the look of a treed cat surrounded by dogs.“I don’t know,” Jason answered feebly.

The three year old damsel’s daughter began another round of whining. “Mother I’m hungry. I want some ice cream.”

Suddenly her mother picks up her daughter who is crying “I want ice cream” over and over and pounces her on the ticket counter in front of Jason as Jason is trying to help another passenger with a complaint. “Tell it to Jason,” she says, aiming her daughter’s tantrum straight at her nemesis, Jason. “Tell him you are hungry, that you have to stay here in the airport for another hour and a half and maybe still not get on the plane. And if you can’t, then you will have to rent a car and ride in a car with your crying baby brother and sister who are also hungry and then go on a ferry for a two hour sea sick ride. Tell him.”

Jason and the boy just starred at each other in stunned silence. The mother with the birdcage insincerely said, “I could take the baby in my lap if that would help.”“What will I do with myself and the other children,” was her answer. “I could leave the nanny behind to catch the next available flight, but I would still need three seats and if I could get on I could hold the baby. But thank you for offering. That’s the only offer of help I’ve had for the last three hours,” and with those words she turned and starred at Jason.

We were relieved when they announced our flight and left the angry mother behind. Nine of us including the other mother with the birdcage, nanny, husband, two children, a dog, lizard, rabbit and trees were escorted out to a small two engine Cessna. I was “invited” to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. I was a bit alarmed by the small plane that I imagined was like the one John Kennedy, Jr. crashed off the coast of Nantucket. I was even more alarmed when I sat in the co-pilot seat, the black paint around the instruments and the controls in front of me worn away to the metal, holes in the dash I could see through all the way to the nose cone of the plane.

The woman with her husband, children, rabbit, et al sat directly behind me. The dog sat on her lap, the birdcage on her husbands. The trees got a roomier space in the back of the plane.

She now had caught the damsel in distress disease. She turned to her husband and growled, “You know I’m afraid to fly and you put me in an airplane made of popcorn popper foil.”

“I don’t feel safe,” she continued. “You promised me that I would not be afraid.”

“Ma’am there is nothing to be afraid of,” the pilot interjected.

“It’s the Saturday before the fourth of July. You could be a terrorist and you are flying a tin can. Are you lonely, depressed? Do you like your job?”

“Ma’am I do like my job,” the pilot responded. “I’m not suicidal. I’m not lonely and depressed. I love to fly. I fly Lear Jets during the week and I fly for Cape Air on the weekends during the season. This is a safe plane, ma’am. They do a good job at Cape Air keeping their planes maintained.”

“That’s what they said about John John’s plane,” This time talking to her husband. “It’s hot, I’m sweating and you know how I don’t like to sweat.”

It was hot. We had to wait in the plane on the tarmac for permission to take off for what seemed like forever. The plane had no air conditioning and the heat from the black tarmac with nine people in a small plane was oppressive.

“I’m sorry,” the husband said. “I didn’t know the planes were this small. It was a mistake.”

Just then the pilot began to start the engines. First he ignited the left one. It coughed and sputtered but would not start. Then he tried the right engine. It did the same. He repeated this three times.“It was a mistake,” she said glaring at him with her gritted teeth. “The problem is you don’t learn from mistakes. It is important that you learn this time.”

The engines finally caught. The propeller hum joined the extremely loud engine roar.I glanced at the husband. His meek expression and swallowed pride announced to me that he was having an affair or he was about to. How else could he tolerate this humiliation?

The plane taxied out onto the runway and took off. Soon we were in the air with the consistent engine noise and vibration dominating every other sensation. The ride was stable. The mother was calming down or she realized that her fate was now completely in the pilot’s hands.

“I’m sorry I was so critical. I know you need to be calm to do your job,” she said to the pilot. “Perhaps I can do something for you to make it up. I want to be sure you are relaxed. I could give you a backrub if that would help.”

“No thank you, ma’am,” the pilot replied, “You need to keep your seatbelt on at all times.”

We arrived in the Nantucket airport at 3:30. My bag came. Marietta’s didn’t. That seemed to be the norm here. We took a cab to #2 Chestnut, leaving Marietta’s bag, hoping it would be delivered to our bed and breakfast three hours later.

Chapter Two

We were here now, our destination, Nantucket. We were on the third floor of the Hawthorne House, #2 Chestnut. We shared a bath with two other bedrooms on the third floor. Across the street was a flower shop. Out our window the street was blooming with hydrangeas of different hues of pink and baby blue.We went for a walk. Our comments kept coming back to, “It wasn’t this crowded the last time and there weren’t so many cars.”“The difference is,” Marietta noted, “SUV’s. SUV’s didn’t exist then.” She was right these large cumbersome ugly vehicles overwhelmed their parking places everywhere we looked. But it wasn’t just the SUV’s, it was the numbers of people too. Nantucket was like Panama City, Florida or Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Herds of people milling about in T-shirt shops or tourist shops or real-estate offices or restaurants.  Bed and breakfasts and hotels were everywhere.

At least I wasn’t the only one disappointed nor was I the cause of Marietta’s disappointment. We went to a famous sandwich shop near the wharf that served turkey dressing and cranberry sandwiches. We had one. “Nashville’s Bread and Company’s cranberry pecan chicken sandwiches are better than these,” Marietta said.We napped in the late afternoon. We slept for about an hour. Sweet bliss. After all we got up at 5:30 that morning to get on our 7:10 flight. We showered before super. Our moods seemed to improve.The walk through the maze of town streets to our restaurant was not among the masses. People were on their steps, greeting us with smiles, friendly faces and hellos. The restaurant, the American Seasons was expecting us. Marietta made reservations for us long before we came. We were seated at a small two person table in the server’s traffic pattern to the kitchen. A much better four top table was set for two behind us.“

That must be for someone important,” Marietta said.Soon a young couple was seated there. The woman looked exactly like John Kennedy Junior’s wife. The young man looked like an Italian version of Junior. “It’s her sister,” Marietta conjectured. “You know I think she had one that wasn’t killed in the plane crash.”

“I hope so,” I replied.

Two tables down two thirty-something couples were practicing wealthy yuppie one-upmanship. One husband pulled out a small pocket flashlight to use for reading the menu, a completely unnecessary accessory. The nanny for the other couple arrived with their newborn. “Oh I know it’s silly but I just wanted to give her a kiss before her bedtime,” the mother said. She oohed over her baby and made everybody at the table hold her. Then the nanny took the baby away.

“Bedtime?” Marietta whispered to me. “When isn’t it an infant’s bedtime?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed.

The food was delicious. Marietta had fresh yellow squash soup that had the sweet taste of pureed caramelized Vidalia onions blended into the soup. In the center of the bowl was a small crab cake.Her entrée was a baked halibut with a seafood chowder sauce.

Mine was a grilled Mackerel steak served on a bed of Israelis couscous. The couscous was the size of small pearls. Beside and around the couscous was a red cranberry chutney. The couscous pearls melted sweetly in my mouth and mixed well with the butter-sweet cranberry taste. Marietta and I share tastes. Her halibut and sauce won the prize.

Once in our room after dinner the bed swallowed us in deep dream filled sleep. I dreamed two doctors were working on my head. They had something they were applying on top my scalp. I protested.“I have so few hairs there that each one has a name. Please don’t pull them out,” I begged. But clearly the medical procedure required it. Whatever they were doing felt good. In the dream I dropped off into an anesthetized trance. When I woke from the trance, I had a young face and a head full of tight black curls.

When I really did wake up the next morning the mirror put back my bald head and old face in their proper place. I still had my hairs named Fred, Arthur, Gene, Ted, Ralph, Ethel, etc. Each of whom I’m especially proud of. Marietta and I quickly dressed in shorts, sandals and shirt and were off to breakfast at the Coffin House, a large expensive bed and breakfast near the Hawthorne House.We were seated in an elaborate formal dining room. The people around us were loud. The accents were of Boston or New York.“I like wealthy southerners better,” Marietta said.

“You do?!” I answered. “Why is that?”

“Wealthy southerners wear their wealth in jewels and expensive handbags. These wealthy Yankees shout their wealth to the world in cell phone conversations about the house they are considering buying and they can’t decide which beach would be the best location.”

Marietta was referring to a cell phone conversation we couldn’t help but overhear from a woman sitting three tables away, talking on her cell phone while her husband read Investor’s Business Daily.

After going home for a tooth brush, we rented bikes and exited the town as fast as we could. As I rode behind Marietta, I heard her explain about the color and fragrance of the natural foliage. I couldn’t get myself to gather much enthusiasm for this. I felt like my father who couldn’t be bothered to be interested in any topic not centered around him.I prayed silently for my mother’s spirit instead and for a moment my prayers were answered. I saw the reds, purples, and yellows in the wild flowers that bordered our bike path. These flowers and their colors seemed to rush vividly into my brain and excited my neurons into a soft pleasure. This lasted until we had to paddle up a hill. The burning of my glutes pushed out the colors and replaced them with a narrow task oriented focus of “hurry, let’s get there.”

We reached our destination, Siasconset. It is a small village with a tennis club in the center of town. I don’t know what more there is to say about this place except that it goes by two names “Siasconset” and “Sconset,” and they pronounced exactly the same.The most spectacular thing about this bike ride along Polis Road is the Sconset Golf Club. It is exquisite. As you would expect, it is a lynx course with strong sea breezes. In season it is an exclusive members-only course. Its fairways were a lush green framed by a contrasting tan brown of the sea oats deep rough. Players were walking fast with caddies. The flags on the greens were blown straight south by the wind.Marietta and I went to look at a lighthouse above the course, but all we could do was watch golfers swing and scamper after their ball. To a non-golfer it looks like a serious intense game of hit and go fetch and hit again. Surely a Martian would think this the ultimate silliness for players to become so gravely engrossed in a game of fetch that one might play with a dog. But Marietta and I envied those golfers, tended to by their caddies, walking on their green carpets, surrounded by sea gulls and egrets and breathing oxygen filled ocean air as they played. They seemed so intense and dedicated to their game.Our ride back to town was mainly distinguished by our sore butts and burning hamstrings. Our trek was between twenty and thirty miles with a stop for lunch at Sconset, but for people who haven’t been on a bicycle in two years it was a test.

We were proud that we passed the test when we wheeled into Hawthorne House. We showered and I worked some on my book while Marietta neared the end of her book A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler.

For supper we went to the Quaker House just around the corner from us on Centre Street. Paintings of sailboats decorated the walls. They were all by same artist, Kerry Hallam. I’m sure he would be insulted when I describe them as Leroy Neimanesque but I don’t know a better way to describe those vivid sprays of bright colors.

Marietta was sure that our waiter was the artist. “He just looks like a sea captain,” she said. And he did. He had thick dark hair with graying temple and a peppered gray and black mustache.“Are you a sailor?” Marietta asked the waiter.“No,” he replied. “I don’t sail. I’m from New Mexico.”

Marietta was so disappointed that our waiter was not the artist or at least a sailor that she didn’t ask her usual follow-up question of “what is your name and what do you do for fun here?”

“Here is a book of the artist works,” the waiter said, handing us a coffee table art book of vistas looking out from hotel verandas where wealthy tourists once sat, looking over some famous sailboat filled harbor. Among these vistas were a few nudes to legitimize Kerry Hallam as a serious painter.“

Mr. Hallam is a sixty-five year old English gentleman that comes here for supper precisely at 6:00 PM every night.” The waiter explained as he hands us a letter-sized card detailing Mr. Hallam’s biography and his artistic interests and his adventures with the rich and famous, including Bridget Bardot and Salvador Dali. In addition to his paintings one can purchase his autobiography and a CD of songs he wrote in the seventies.After supper we strolled further down Centre Street to the ticket office of the local Improv Theatre group. The theatre was in the basement of the First Methodist Church. It was 8:15 and the performance didn’t begin until 9:00. We bought our tickets and wandered back on to the street to window shop, when it began to thunder and rain. We made our way back to the church and found the large sanctuary doors open. We wandered in the dark sanctuary. What light there was came through the plain large windows from the streetlights giving us enough light to see about, but not enough light to read by.The pews weren’t like most church pews. Here each church pew had a small entry door making each pew an enclosed box. Apparently people at one time rented a pew in the churches here. We wandered down the aisle to the front.Lightning from the storm outside brightened the sanctuary for a moment. It seemed like I had some reason to be there then. I wondered out loud to Marietta, “What is the message here?”

We were both a bit spooked and a bit by the storm and awed by this ghost filled place. We looked up and in the loft above the church floor were several statues of people sitting leaning forward looking down at us.We were startled at first. But Marietta observed “they look friendly enough.” We sat together silently for some time, the only live spirits there.“The message is that fate will provide a quiet place in the chaos of life if you are open to going inside the dark sanctuary,” Marietta finally said in answer to my question.

“So we’re here,” I said, “in this quiet place. What am I supposed to hear in the silence?”

“Yourself.”“

And our parents,” I said looking up at the statues that represented the congregation. “I miss my mother and father, your parents, the generation that left it to us to take our turn standing in support of those before us, back next to empty space. I miss my brother who died when I was fourteen.”

“Maybe that’s why we came inside to the quiet?” Marietta said. “To discover how disconnected we feel. To remember what love is and commit to creating more of it when we go outside again.”

I didn’t answer. We sat in silence for a while longer until outside we heard a voice yelling in the street like a carnival barker, “Improv right here. Come on in.”

We got up and went outside of our quiet place only to go right back into the church’s basement theatre. Inside the theatre nine young people, college age to thirty, held court with the audience. They played many of the standard improv games. The actors were good, but what impressed me was their youthful don’t give up, I’ll try anything spirit, how they encouraged each other, teased each other, promoted each other and trusted each other.

There it was, the thing I yearned for just a few minutes ago upstairs in the church, family, community, brothers and sisters playing having such fun.I was eager to go to bed, to dream to see what other messages might come to me in the dark of night. This night’s dreams weren’t as kind to me as the last. I wasn’t given a young face and a full head of hair.I had three dreams. The first was that I was an English nobleman and that I was in line for the post just under the Prime Minister. There was a collection of people seated in a government hall. The queen and other royals entered. I continued sitting, as did the others. Someone nodded to me and motioned for me to take off my hat. I had my Ben Hogan hat on that I wear inside and out in the winter. I had forgotten that it was on my head. I reached up and quickly grabbed it. A woman with a hat on sat beside me looking compassionately at me. I asked her “why can you wear a hat?” She didn’t answer because the answer was obvious. She was royalty and I wasn’t.It seemed I had a rival for the post, but he didn’t want my post. He wanted to be head of the Navy. Suddenly a choir began to sing accompanied by violins. The choir sang a melody of no words. I somehow knew that the music was the signal for the competition to begin. I got up, as did my rival. We fought a musically choreographed fight like in the movie Hidden Tiger Crouching Dragon. I won. Because I won, I knew I could choose whether or not my friend and rival got the job he wanted.

The two of us approached the prime minister for some sort of vestment ceremony. I announced, “Prime Minister, may I present the next Head of the Admirality.”

My friend stepped forward and was duly installed to his office with pomp and ceremony much as one would imagine King Arthur making someone a knight.Then my friend announced, “Prime Minister may I present the next Deputy Prime Minister.”

I stepped forward. The Prime Minister looked past me as if I didn’t exist. At some point it became clear that something had happened to make me ineligible for the post. That something was that I hadn’t even known the royal etiquette well enough to remove my hat when the Queen came in. I moved away silently.That was the first and most vivid dream.The second dream was a domestic scene in Marietta’s house, perhaps before we were married. Things were being organized and straightened. Marietta’s father who suffered from Parkinson’s disease was shuffling about carrying a couple of forks. He looked as if he once had a purpose, but had long since forgotten it. Marietta’s mother was exasperated and motioned for us to get him out of there. And we did.That was the second dream.In the third dream, Southwestern (now Rhodes College), my college alma mater, was playing a football game. Somehow three teams were playing. It was like a tournament and Southwestern would play the winner of the game between the other two teams. I saw the kickoff of the first game. The ball went all the way through the end zone. It appeared to be a very good kick. I retrieved the ball. It was a goofy ball that had a lot of bounce. Clearly the ball had been toyed with. I went to the coach to tell him. By the time I got to the Southwestern coach, Southwestern was way ahead and it didn’t matter whether the other team cheated or not.These dreams didn’t leave me with the same confidence left by my rejuvenation dream of the previous night. “I know what this means,” I said while we were having breakfast the next morning. “It means that I won’t get my books published.”

“David that’s fear talking,” Marietta said. “You always said that if a dream had a message you couldn’t see that message through the lense of fear.”

“Yeah so what do these dreams mean?!” I challenged Marietta.“

Well in the first dream the rival character achieved his heart’s desire. He became head of the admiralty or military or whatever that was. You were happy about that and he was surprised. Perhaps that means that you won’t get what you wanted at first, but you will be surprised by getting what you really want, that suits you better.”

“That sounds good, but what about my loss of face with royalty?” I asked.

“David,” Marietta said. “That is not you. You will never succeed in a setting that values form above content. You wouldn’t remember to take off you hat. If you got a job that required that level of attention to ceremony you would surely fail. But put you in a charge of military strategy, a job that requires determination and common sense, that’s a job you would be good at.”

“Okay so what about the second dream. I feel like your father in that dream, once having strength and a sense of purpose, but now I have somehow become lost. I pretend to know where I’m going when I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do have a clumsiness about you sometimes,” Marietta said. “But in the dream we got that part of you out of mother’s way. Maybe you can keep the foolish side of you out of the way.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Now what about the last dream?”

“Well that seems to be the easiest one to understand,” she said.

“Not for me.”

“You don’t need to be so competitive or critical,” she said. “Your sibling rival side is unnecessary, because your team in winning. You have always tried too hard to impress and you don’t need to.”

“I hope you are right,” I said. “That makes sense of me.”

We finished our breakfast at Arnonds which, like every breakfast place on Nantucket, seemed to have a version of Eggs Benedict, but I had that the previous morning. I got a scrambled egg with diced tomato bagel and swiss cheese sandwich. Marietta had polish sausage, scrambled eggs and an English muffin. The bed and breakfast gave us two nine-dollar breakfast vouchers, but our hot tea, juice and tip put us ten dollars over the voucher.

The atmosphere at Arnonds was much less pretentious than the Jared Coffin House. It was a café not a formal hotel dining room. People sat quietly, talked, ate and read the paper. Local people had breakfast here. The food was good and the people were ordinary folk.Marietta picked up three newspapers. The New York Times and the local Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror. We sat at our table hungry for news after being away from any media for three days. Nothing much had changed, except, according to the New York Times, German Chancellor Schroeder had found a picture of his father who was killed in WWII dressed in a Nazi uniform. China’s top leaders wanted to admit capitalists in the communist party and Vini Testeverde is in good shape, better than last season, down to seven percent body fat. That’s almost as good as the Titan’s Eddie George’s five percent. I’ll bet Testeverde doesn’t have his own chef life George does.

In Nantucket news the front page announced that the senior van service is being merged with the NRTA (the Nantucket Regional Transit Authority) and the Nantucket Historic Commission (known by locals as the NHC) is on the case of property owners who are neglecting their historic property in hopes that as it deteriorates they can have permission to demolish it and build something more profitable on the lot. “No, we won’t have that in Nantucket,” Commissioner Voigt says.

Now that we were caught up on the essential news of the day, we window shopped and decided to make the obligatory climb up to the Congregational Church tower. From there you can see the whole of the island and islands beyond. I learned that the Congregational Church had formerly been called the Presbyterian Church. These two names were interchangeable because they both had their origins in Calvinism.From the tower windows I saw the island, the harbor, the beaches and the boats. The most interesting thing I saw was a woman and five children having a picnic under a tree in front of the church. All the children were about four or five. “Surely they are not all hers,” I wondered.

“No,” Marietta said. “This looks like a mother who has taken all the neighborhood four year olds on an outing.”

After their snack they marched up the stairs where they became fascinated by the binoculars and the fact that the last Indian executed on the island was hung in this church.“Where did they hang him?”

“What did he do?”

“Was he a bad Indian?”

“Why did they hang him?”

“I saw a man hanging on TV once.”

The adult caregiver tried to distract them with, “look over here, maybe we can see the Endeavor” or “Is that your brother’s school down there?” Eventually it worked and they were discussing more pleasant subjects.From the bell tower we saw Tuckernuck Island. “It has about thirty cottages, no electricity or running water,” the guide said. “This is where Nantucket folk go to get away in the summer. The shelling is good and sun tells you when to go to bed and when to get up. You have a drink at five o’clock, go to bed with the sun and wake up and do it all over again.”

After we left the church tower we went for a bike ride to Dionis Beach. We took Cliff Road. Houses were hidden from the street by hedges with precisely square cut corners, eight feet tall with holes in the hedges for the driveways or hedges shaped so that an arch opened for the front gate.  The glimpses we caught of the views of the ocean from these houses were spectacular.Again the children of this neighborhood fascinated me. They were on bicycles everywhere. Young ones were riding on seats behind their parents seat. Infants were laying in two wheel carriages attached to their parents rear bike wheel. Four year olds were riding on the second seat of a tandem bike, pretending to pedal like a big boy. And children six and above riding on their own bikes, alone, in pairs or in packs unaccompanied by an adult. Nantucket was a parent’s paradise. Bring your children along, throw them on a bike and if they were big enough, they would entertain themselves for the whole day with one biking adventure after another. They could bike to a field and fly a kite, or to the beach or to the sailboat school where they could learn to sail and have sail boat races or to the end of the jetty and back. The island was a safe place for children. Though there were too many cars on the island, all drivers expected to be driving slow behind bicycles. The ocean served as a fence to protect children from dangerous predators. Any grandmother would be proud to bring their grandchildren to such a safe, fun, educational, historic, child friendly place.

Our first stop on the way to Dionis Beach was an outdoor sandwich restaurant and bakery called “Something Natural.” This was the first unique food I had on Nantucket. All the other island restaurants were versions of any resort Deer Valley, Utah, Vail, Colorado, Naples, Florida, etc. The food was good. The prices were a bit high, seafood with an asian flair. Cajun was passé.

But at “Something Natural” the food belonged there in that place. It was as if it emerged on the planet for the purpose of being there. Only a small sign marked this place. It could be easily missed in this purely residential high-end area. We turned our bikes into a gravel drive before we were able to see a bike rack full of bikes and a large yard with picnic tables scattered about, each a comfortable distance from the other, some under trees and some in the sun.We parked our bikes, walked up steps to a back porch where there was a line of people. Outside was a sign that warned patrons to be ready to order, to give their name and money, no charge cards. Inside was the smell of baking bread and shelves filled with breads of all kinds, pumpernickel, whole wheat, eight grain, egg bread, Portuguese bread, and others we can’t remember.We each ordered a lobster and shrimp half sandwich and two Nantucket Tea drinks that are now all over the country and some Nantucket potato chips cooked in peanut oil, no cholesterol. We paid, left my name and found a secluded table in the shade of cherry trees while Marietta waited for the food. Large black birds were boldly foraging around us.

Soon “David” was shouted and Marietta came to join me with our “half” sandwiches. These half sandwiches were huge, the bread easily twice the thickness of Colonial bread. Our eight grain bread was like no other I’ve ever eaten, dense and delicious, with a course nutty texture that announced just milled wheat with each bite. The dark molasses oatmeal raisin cookie was also unique. The respectful comings and goings of patrons reflected that this was a special place. Perhaps this was because of the no-nonsense-to-the-point sign at the porch front door.Our table at the back of the yard was half in the sun and half in the shade. We sat there and talked about I don’t know what for a deliciously long time, taking in the sea air, the sun and the graceful movements of people serving and being served good food.

When we could put off our departure no longer, we hopped back on our bikes and peddled toward the beach. The wind was strong. The wind and the hills pushed us and our bikes down into our lowest gear. As we struggled up the hills one bicycle racer, dressed for the part, whipped past us from behind. A few minutes later he came racing toward us. Then again he came upon us from behind. He clearly demonstrated that we were fifty-five and he was not.As we reached the bike rack at Dionis Beach our cell phone rang. It was Fran. Fran is a child development specialist that I sometimes consult with on custody cases. Fran also loves the Cape Cod area. She grew up there as a child spending every summer on its beaches.

“Do you know where I am?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’m at the dunes of Dionis Beach in Nantucket.”

“I had no idea,” she said.

“I’m sure you would appreciate this much more than I do,” I said.

“Oh you must drink in the ocean. The ocean is wonderful. It will change your life.”

We finished our conversation about a case and her words kept rebounding in my head, “you must drink it in… The ocean will change your life.”

Fran is one of my most important mentors. She has been involved in professional child care for forty years. She remains devoted and excited about children. She swims a mile or more every other day, and every day when she can. She is retired, but she can never retire, because the world needs her wisdom too much to let her go. And here she is telling me to “drink in the ocean.”

Well it has too much salt in it, I’m not sure I want to. And if she means something other than drink the water I’m sure I don’t know how to do it. “It (the ocean) will change your life.”

This reminded me of when I was a boy and the missionaries would come to our church and talk about God calling them to go to Africa. I didn’t want to go to Africa and I didn’t want God to call me there.

There are things about my life that I don’t want to change. I have a wonderful loving wife and I don’t want the ocean to change that. I have a profession that I often enjoy that has given me a modicum of comfort and I don’t want the ocean to change that.

Yet, I do yearn for something from the ocean. Can “drinking in the ocean” purify my heart? Can looking at the source of life, water lapping at dirt, can seeing this huge unfathomable liquid expand into the horizon in front of you bringing with it a new kind of peace.

These questions came with no answer except the answer that Fran had a talent for discovering things on the seashore that I did not.Before I could think much further about this question, Marietta and I came upon a man with his nine month old and their dog sitting just at the line on the beach where the water was washing into his feet. The dog was begging for him to throw his ball in the ocean for her to chase and the baby was taking it all in, fascinated by his father, the dog and the ball.

“We miss our dog Greco,” Marietta said. “May we take a picture of you with your dog?”

“Of course,” he said.And we did. I’m not sure I want to look at that picture, but I wonder if that was one way to drink in the ocean. Perhaps he understood what Fran meant.

We walked further down the beach. No one was there for miles. It was a perfect beach. The sun made diamonds on the water. The sea gulls worked with the wind to stay in one place in the sky. Little turins raced back and forth along the beach in front of us. I kept looking for something that would change my life, afraid that I would find it.

We had to be back to town to go on a sunset cruise Marietta had booked for us at 7:00 PM. It was five now. So before I could get any clear answers to my questions about drinking in the ocean, we had to get back on our bikes.Riding our bikes back was much easier. The wind was with us. Once at the Hawthorne House we changed quickly and bumped our bikes over the cobblestones to the wharf. Two couples joined us on the cruise. The captain owned the twenty-five year old freshly painted lobster boat turned tourist cruiser. We lumbered out of the port, passing lines of yachts at anchor. These boats were up to 100 feet long. It costs fifteen dollars a foot per night to rent a mooring, plus water and electricity. That boat costs fifteen million dollars,” our captain said. “It was commissioned today. Its name is the Timoneer. It costs 10% a year of the cost of the boat for its upkeep. That’s $1,500,000. Its tallest mast is as tall as the boat is long, one hundred and fifty feet.” This boat was a sailboat with three tall masts, decorated with flags because of the celebration for the commissioning.Once out of the harbor we passed homes with harbor views. “See that lot there,” the captain pointed to an empty spot between two large houses. “There was a home there. The fellow who bought the house tore it down. He plans to build a new house there. It was a fine home. He paid five and a half million for a lot. You’re from Tennessee right,” he said talking to us.“Yes,” I replied.“That’s Senator Bill Frist’s house. Over there on that point is a house that cost thirty-five million dollars. The owner spent ten million for the house next door for the staff. These folks all belong to the Nantucket Gold and Country Club. The initiation fee is $500,000.”

The cruise continued with the captain pointing to houses of the rich and some marginally famous, “Senator so and so.” “So and so’s house, he’s CEO of Morgan Stanley.” Soon we reached our half way point at the jetty’s beach. The sun was just above the water line as we turned back toward the port. In ten minutes it had disappeared and the air began to cool. Marietta and I snuggled against the cold. It was difficult for us Nashvillians to believe that it was July 2nd and we wished for a fire.

We also learned that the water in this harbor was only about ten feet deep, that it can freeze in the winter, that all these boats will be gone by October, that these waters are harvested for bay scallops. Somehow this information, nor the water, nor the sunset could penetrate my preoccupation with the wealth that surrounded me. I was having a hard time not hating these rich people or wanting to be just like them. I don’t think I would spend thirty-five million on a house that was used one month a year and then most of it is unoccupied. No, I wouldn’t buy or build a twenty million dollar boat, but I might own my own golf course if I could. I hoped not. I realized that Marietta and I were among the poorest on this island. We were staying in the cheapest bed and breakfasts sharing a bathroom with two other couples. We could barely afford to rent bicycles much less rent a car or pay the freight to bring one over. Everything around us shouted status, better-than/less-than and I knew which one we were. It was hard for me to reel-in my competitive juices. It was a comfort to me that the Tennessee Titans could beat the hell out of the New England Patriots. It felt good to realize that Nantucket’s 7,000 year round residents had a great tax base. They must have the best schools and fire departments in the country.Being here was a spiritual exercise in accepting myself and my limits. It is unlikely now at fifty-five that I will be a rich man or the president, though I met a president and I was personally acquainted with a vice-president. See it’s hard to stop this comparing and competing once it gets started. Much of the time I failed this spiritual test, especially when I heard Marietta say, “Ooh look at that. Isn’t that beautiful” and I knew I could never buy it for her.

Once on dry land we hurried to find some warmer place to eat. We rode our bikes to the Lobster Trap. This was a sports bar and lobster restaurant. The captain of our sunset cruise warned us not to stray too far from the menu here. “Stick with the lobster,” he said.

We made the mistake of ordering fried calamari. We got more grease and cornmeal breading than calamari, but the lobster was good and rich. After we finished I had satisfied my lobster craving for the next two years.We bounced our bikes over the cobblestones on the way back and our bikes bounced my prostrate into my shoulders. The beer from supper and the bed engulfed us quickly. This night I did not find any dreams to collect. No message from the netherworld this night.We awakened to our last full day on Nantucket. Our primary mission was to find the golf course where he hit golf balls in the fog. We called Siasconset golf course, not being sure that it was the one. They said they had no tee times, but they might be able to work us on the course with another twosome after 2:30.

We had our Arnond’s breakfast and puttered around town looking at store windows. I came back to Hawthorne House and took my daily shower, etc. We climbed on our bikes for our trip to the golf course about 1:00 PM. We stopped on the way at the Rotary sandwich place and ate turkey sandwiches on good whole what bread under a side porch.When finished we looked for a bathroom. There was none. That was a common experience for us. Many lunch places had no bathroom. In fact there were few such public facilities. Luckily we thought we could hold it till we got to the golf course. We didn’t know we would spend the next hour lost en route.

We found the golf course at 2:45. Sore legs, back and butts got off our bikes. I was delighted to be here. It was the same place where the magic fog flowed onto the course sixteen years ago. This was the place that I gave the credit for fooling Marietta into falling for me. Back then she seemed to be so impressed hat I had the faith to hit my golf ball into the fog on a course I had never played before. Now that Marietta is a golfer I’m not sure that she would find it so astonishing or lovable quality, but then she did.Today was a full sun day. No mystery. The buildings had been enlarged. The course was full of golfers with golfers waiting and other golfers hitting practice balls on the range. The wind blew constantly from west. The starter promised to work us into a group as soon as he could. We rented golf clubs and Marietta and I hit practice balls to warm up and kill time.

At 4:45 the starter teamed us up with a young, barely thirty couple, Brek and Julie. They were married living in New York City. At first I thought Fate had given us the chance of playing with ourselves as a younger couple. But soon I saw that there were few parallels between Marietta and me and Brek and Julie. They were just thirty and been married for five years. Brek just merged his dating service company with another one and was suddenly independently wealthy at thirty. That was certainly not me. Julie just quit her job as a journalist to consider her future. Marietta has not been unemployed since she was a twenty-four year old teacher. Marietta wouldn’t know how to “consider her future.”

They were considering children in four years. We had tried, but none came. No these people don’t yet know what it’s like to fail at marriage as I had twice or to become a widow, alone at thirty two as Marietta had. By the time we met both of us had been defeated by life again and again, but we were still trying. At thirty-nine we had the courage to look each other in the face, see fear and failure and risk it again.As blessed as Brek and Julie were, I did not really want to trade places with them. I treasured the lessons our pain had taught us. I could look into Marietta’s eyes and see the depth of courage that stared back at me. Oh I could trade my back and prostate for Brek’s and Marietta would like Julie’s waist, but other than that we were glad to be us.

We finished our nine holes at 7:30, jumped on our bikes and rode directly to the Sea Grille Restaurant. We walked in just as we were from the golf course, golf hats on golf tees behind our ears and golf balls in our pockets.“You had better appreciate the fact that I can walk into a nice restaurant like this without having to go home and dress first,” Marietta said.

“I didn’t know that there was such a quality to appreciate,” I said. “But I know now and I do appreciate it.”

We had a dozen fresh oysters for an appetizer. I had bay scallops that were harvested yesterday. Marietta had “at first bite” bluefish. The fish and scallops did have a taste we had not experienced in Nashville. The bluefish was not fishy or oily. It had a delicate flaky texture that laid softly on the tongue. It was flavored with olives and tomatoes. My scallops had a sweet flavor. They were large for what are traditionally termed bay scallops.It was dark when we finished eating. We had to peddle our bikes back without benefit of front or back lights on streets that often had no street lights. Luckily there was not much traffic. Once back Marietta was not ready to call it a night. We parked our bikes at the Hawthorne House. We wandered among restaurants until we found one that would serve us tea and dessert at 9:45. Cioppino was the one. We had a delicious apple torte with fresh strawberries, blueberries and raspberries sprinkled on top with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the side. After we gobbled it up, competing for melted drops of the ice cream, we left Cioppino’s and returned to the Hawthorne House and bed.On this night I did dream. I dreamed that my sister Betsy had found a young mentally challenged man who was in love with her. Betsy was born with Down syndrome and is now at forty-eight having a variety of physical ailments. Betsy is an exceptionally bright Down syndrome adult. She is able to live semi-independently. In my dreams this young man needed Betsy’s intelligence and Betsy needed his physical competence. And Betsy enjoyed bossing him around.

This felt just like me. I don’t feel like the brightest light on the Christmas tree or the strongest. But sometimes I have good sense to offer and sometimes I have strength. Maybe with my confession of inadequacy I had found a strange marriage of these qualities inside myself. The requirement for accessing them is that I acknowledge that there is a lot I don’t know. That’s not something I do easily or often, but it is something I often feel.It was Wednesday, our departure day. Turbulence at the boundaries. I was worried that we wouldn’t get back Wednesday night. New England was expecting a storm. I was afraid we might get socked in either at Nantucket or Providence or even Islip, our stop over. We called a taxi to pick us up at 3:00 and called Cape Air to confirm our reservations. We had our Arnond’s breakfast. It was the fourth of July. Arnond’s was on Main Street. Main Street was blocked off to traffic and parking. A pie eating contest was being organized. A fireman’s water fight was being planned for noon. The day’s activities included a slick pole contest, a dunk tank, puppet theatre, and rope tug on Jettie’s beach. Fireworks were planned for 9:00 PM, but there would be a test fire first, because some July 4th’s are so fogged over that the fireworks can’t be seen or heard. In that event the fireworks were to be rescheduled for the next clear day.We’re going to miss most of these festivities, but we couldn’t miss the fact that Nantucket is a patriotic place. The stars and stripes were flying everywhere. Red, white and blue bunting decorated most stores and museums. People were handing out free small flags.We walked down to the wharf. I want to see the Timoneer, the just commissioned sailboat up close. We walked past one hundred or more motorized yachts that were between seventy-five and one hundred and fifty feet long. And they were deceptively wide, some nearly fifteen feet. As we looked inside these sometime three story floating mansions, we saw large formal dining rooms, entertainment rooms with big screen TV’s. Someone on board one boat yelled out a question to the boat’s owner. “Does it cost money when someone calls you on the phone?” All the boats had satellite phones that don’t depend on cell phone towers or phone lines. We didn’t hear the answer to the question.As we walked up to the Timoneer, we were able to see those on board. Seven crew members were all dressed in a uniform of white tennis shoes, gray Bermuda shorts and a yellow golf shirt. They were tending to the boat, or serving food to a party of ten people. None of those ten people being served were younger than seventy years old.

“So maybe that’s it,” Marietta said.

“Maybe what’s it?” I asked.

“Well they’re old,” she observed, “and you can’t take it with you and they don’t have much time left. That’s why they built this. For fun.”

“But why would someone build this useless toy just to die and leave it behind?” I asked. “What good does it do for posterity or naval history or anybody? After the owner dies, what will the heirs do with it? Give it away as a tax shelter? But who would take it? Taking it would cost a cool million and a half per year. I don’t get it.”

“Well it is a puzzlement?” Marietta admitted imitating Yul Brenner in the King and I.

Little spittles of rain began to fall. We sought shelter at Bosins, an outdoor restaurant with an awning on the wharf. There was a long line of people waiting. The person in charge was in the process of refusing to take more names, because they couldn’t seat those waiting for at least an hour or so.Marietta asked if we could eat at the bar where she had spotted two empty seats. Eventually the answer was yes.We shared a lobster bisque and a grilled shrimp salad with bow-tie pasta and greens. The bisque was wonderful, but the salad needed to be dressed. After we finished eating we meandered back through the rows of galleries and shops toward our bags at the Hawthorne House. The cab fetched us promptly at 3:00 and ferried us to the airport. We checked in. Our bags were loaded on the plane. I saw them go into the hole myself. The flight to Providence was in a similar Cessna to the one that brought us to Nantucket, except this time we had a co-pilot and only six passengers who made no complaints.

We arrived in Providence changed planes to Southwest and there is nothing else to tell except that we arrived home safely.

In Hrumph: Traveling with a Difficult Man who Really Doesn’t Want to Go I quoted Frances Mays as saying that all trips are quests, pilgrimages for the discovery of a new way of life or a new self. Often the traveler doesn’t know what they are looking for or what question they are asking or that they are asking a question. When I wrote that book I wasn’t sure what my quest was until after I returned home and reflected on my trip and what I had written.Before I left on this trip I had lunch with Jules Seeman. Jules was a professor at Peabody while I was in graduate school. He was an important mentor and model for me then and has remained so since. He had agreed to read my book for therapists to review and critique my ideas and writing.Jules is now north of eighty. His age was no impediment to his reading and commenting on my book. He gave me many helpful ideas that I put to use immediately after our meeting. One of the things he inadvertently said to me was that he believed that only two things mattered to him and they were connection and communication.Though on this trip I confirmed my fear that I was no longer a young man, I discovered that my sexual prowess was not what mattered to Marietta. She reported that she had a wonderful time on our trip and if I were to guess the reason for her satisfaction, I would nominate the fact that we enjoyed talking and discussing our experience and we enjoyed one another’s good company. Age will take many things from us, but there is no reason that we have to lose those qualities as we get older. Thank you Nantucket for another wonderful experience. I am no longer afraid of you.

Italy and France

PrefaceThis book is for the person whose mate comes home once a week after talking to a friend or travel agent about “this new wonderful place that everybody’s going to that you got to see.” You enjoy home, the familiar, the life and friends you have and you wish that your mate could be satisfied with what he or she has at home.This book is for the person who loves to explore, learn and grow, the person who is excited by going to new and different places and your mate is bunkered down and does not want to leave the familiar and explore alternative worlds that might challenge his or her assumptions.This book is for the couple that flew to a strange new place, got to the hotel room and began to fight. It became so unpleasant then on this first day of the trip that one or both of you considered taking your half of the traveler’s checks and going on separate vacations.This book is for the couple who profess to enjoy traveling together, but who often find their trips filled with conflict and tension, competing agendas, disparate values and interests.This book is for the traveling companions that have different levels of enthusiasm for the trip. One may play the role of the cheerleader tour guide, while the other plays the role of the reluctant and complaining participant.And this book is for the couple who have emptied their nest, accomplished their career goals and are wondering if travel will fill the void. They are both afraid of change, but know that they must change and that fate will bring change regardless of their attempts to keep things the same. They want an easy answer and hope to find a Brigadoon or a Garden of Eden on their journey.The success of a pleasure trip often has little to do with where you go or what you see or where you stay.  Most of the time a trip’s success largely depends on how you get along with your traveling companion. Many a trip is ruined by a fight between mates just as they begin what they had hoped would be an exciting shared adventure. Memories of a grand trip are clouded by an angry exchange just before you return home. A sullen, unhappy travel companion can transform what could be a treasured time into miserable moments.This is a travel book but it is not about destinations, and special events, although there are many wonderful places mentioned and described. It is not about meals and accommodations, though that is also mentioned here. The focus is on traveling together and using a trip to bring you, as a couple, closer together. It is about the tensions of competing agendas, different energy levels and differing interests.It is a book about the challenges of marriage at mid-life, a time of life when the demands of work and family are not so pressing, when leisure has meaning. What is a couple to do with each other now that the mission has been accomplished, the children are raised, the retirement account is full, and they have a modicum of health, time and money, to do something else? Travel is often the answer to what that something else is, but travel, as far away as you can, you still cannot escape the struggle of getting along with yourself and each other and facing the reality that life together and alone is finite.The book will describe two trips that I took with my wife, Marietta, and the ordeals we went through together, some of these ordeals were presented by the inevitable wrong turns and missed travel connections others were created by the clash of our personalities. The book will describe couple travel dynamics and suggest ways to work together to make your trip a remarkable, unforgettable, exciting adventure.Hopefully this subject is approached here with some humor and some insight. Hopefully you will be provoked to laugh, think and reflect on our human predicament.Chapter One: Beginning with a Bad AttitudeThe e-mail began with “I finally got to have a focused conversation with David about our trip to Italy. I know the plane leaves in three days but somehow it’s hard for him to think about . . .” The e-mail to our travel agent continued with details about our trip.Gloria, my secretary, brings this e-mail into my office in her right hand holding it as if it is evidence for my conviction of murder. “Is this true? I just read this e-mail Marietta wrote to your travel agent. Why don’t you talk to your wife about this trip? Aren’t you excited?”“No,” was my curt reply.“You are going on this romantic trip to Europe and your wife can think of nothing else and you don’t want to go.”“That’s right.”“Then why are you going?”“She wants to. It will make her happy. And I promised her.”“But you will be complaining and grumbling the whole time?!”“That’s right.”“I don’t see why she’s taking you.”“Me either. Maybe she won’t. You can go in my place.”“You are horrible. You better get your attitude adjusted before Marietta gets on that plane with you.”I enjoy this banter with my secretary and I was planning on enjoying hrumphing my way through Paris and Tuscany with Marietta as the object of my curmudgeon spirit. Hrumphing. It is a fine art. It provides the protection of innocence, the righteousness of sacrifice and the high moral ground of martyrdom.Hrumph’s are statements that accept the realty of loss, but with protest. It has its origins in childhood in the statement “momma (or daddy) do I have to?!” The male adult version has a bit more dignity, “Well if that’s what you want,” or “If that’s what it will take to make you happy,” or “You know I’m dying with pneumonia and have a fever of 104˚, but if you need me to, I will go out in the cold rain and get the groceries.” Most often the male hrumph involves money. “I’ve worked twenty hours overtime and that’s not enough to satisfy you so I guess I will get another job. Go ahead charge it on the credit card.”Sometimes the hrumpher’s protest wins. When I was eight years old I approached my father as he read the paper with two baseball gloves, mine and one of my brothers and a ball. “Dad come play catch with me.”“I can’t son,” he would say, paper remaining in place, “I’ve got a bone in my leg.”I never knew exactly how to reply to that. It was the all time champion hrumph.Taught by my father’s example, I became a boy expert hrumpher.“Son, get out of the pool. We are going now.”“Oh momma (daddy) do I have to. Just five more minutes.” If I got my five minutes, the same exchange began again for another and another five minutes until I got a determined angry look followed by, “If you don’t get out of that pool, I’m coming in to get you!”Then my hrumphing ceased and I complied.I love to hrumph.  It is a fine art--an art most men perfect in their 50's and beyond.  The main point of a hrumph is "poor me."  It is modeled after a little boy who has scraped his knee and is trying not to cry, but his knee hurts!  On cue, his mother, or her surrogate, is supposed to say something to the effect of "Poor Johnny! You are so strong and brave to endure such pain."  Most of the time, the world does not respond on cue like Johnny's mother, so a good hrumpher will fill in for himself like this:  "I've been sitting here waiting dressed in this monkey suit for forty-five minutes.  If I didn't love you so much and weren't such a good husband, I would have just left you here and gone on."  His wife is now supposed to say, "Dear, you are such a patient, long-suffering, good husband."  But if she doesn't say it, he has already said it for her.A champion hrumpher never allows a person to believe he is okay or that there is any reason for him not to complain.   The father of my college roommate was a master at this.  I would call on the phone for my roommate.  His father would answer.  I would say, "How are you, Mr. Kennedy," and he would always reply, "Poorly, thank you."  I was taken back by this answer, not sure what to say in reply.  Finally, one day after he answered my inquiry with "Poorly, thank you," I ventured to ask him what was wrong.  That was just what he wanted.  He began his dissertation of the maladies he so bravely suffered, and then finished with a thesis on the world and how awful, mean, and cruel it was and how difficult it was to survive.  I think he enjoyed his monologue, but I was even more at a loss for a response than before, so I said, "Gee, Mr. Kennedy that’s awful.  Is John there?"Hrumphing joins a contest of wills. Implicit in the hrumph is a power struggle. In the hrumph the loss of the power struggle is acknowledged and the posture of innocent victim is reserved for the hrumpher. Moral currency is banked for use in the future when the hrumpher will remind their alleged oppressor of the great sacrifice that they once made. Perhaps this goes all the way back to pre-historic times when men and women would trade security for sex. The trade is not so effective in modern times when women are army generals, judges and sheriffs and women can provide their own security, thank you very much. But hrumphing remains an interesting, provocative and sometimes fun strategic move in love’s post-courtship game. It is a passive aggressive posture that is, at the same time, open and honest. It challenges life’s givens. A hrumph requires the courage to state one’s likes and dislikes, to take a stand and announce that, “I exist and I want the world to make room and accommodate my special identity and its requirements. I value me, my struggle with life and its demands.”As a boy I was exasperated by my father’s hrumphing. As an adult I see what a great teacher in hrumphing my father was. Yes, he was irritating but he was available to be known, hated, liked, teased, avoided and loved. My father was a lovable, irascible rascal and I am his son.The day after my conversation with my secretary, Ellen McPherson, a good friend, met us for coffee as a bon voyage to our trip. “Are you excited?” She asked.  Looking directly at me as if she knew Marietta’s answer and she wanted to know mine. “No,” I said. “I hate walking and looking, walking and looking. You take five slow steps, stop and look, then five more, stop and look, and you do this for hours. It might be called going to the museum or going shopping or walking in the park. There’s no purpose to it and it hurts my back. Now I can walk or I can sit in the audience and look, but I hate walking and looking.”“Haven’t you ever heard of smelling the roses, David?” she asked.“Yes but if its me smelling the roses, it is me who interprets whether or not the smell is pleasing. And wherever I go I take me with me, my values, my likes and dislikes and I hate walking and looking and that’s what tourists do.”Ellen then began talking about her trip to Europe and Cortona, the small medieval town on a hilltop where the University of Georgia has a summer arts program. At the mention of Cortona I grabbed the chance to plead my case.“Yes, Cortona, I have always wanted to go to a program like that in Cortona. You stay there for a long time. You have a purpose for being there. You get to know the people in the town and they you. I would love to get immersed in the culture of one place instead of hopping from place to place and walking and looking.”With that Marietta burst into tears. “That’s the first time you have ever mentioned Cortona. I would have planned to go there if I had known. Maybe I can still make reservations in Cortona.”This was the Honorable Marietta Shipley, Judge of Second Circuit Court of Davidson County. Marietta cried when her parents died and that’s it. She didn’t cry when she lost the race for the Nashville Bar Association Board.  Oh, she did cry when she lost her cat, but Marietta tearing up is rare much less this sobbing. Ellen and I were both startled by this.“I feel so much pressure going on this trip,” Marietta said in between her sobs. “I have looked forward to it for so long, but going with you scares me. You will be miserable and it will all be my fault.”“Well that’s the plan.” I admitted. “My pleasure will come from grousing and complaining. I get to do that and you get to go. I thought that we both agreed that this was a good trade.”“No, David. You agreed with yourself. Going with you on this trip is like being pregnant and forced to marry someone who does not want to marry you. You are supposed to be grateful, but you can’t even muster a smile.”“That bad is it?”“Well maybe not quite,” and a grin escaped her lips.I began to think that Gloria understood things I had not when she said, “You are horrible. You had better get your attitude adjusted before you get on that plane.”My mother always talked about how my father hated to travel. Before they went somewhere he would grumble and complain about how he hated to go. When he went sometimes he had a good time, but he made her suffer every time she envisioned a trip. If she went without him he would punish her by getting sick and forcing her to abort her trip and come home to care for him.I wondered whether or not I had become my father. Surely not, I assured myself. But I could tell I needed an attitude adjustment. Somehow I knew that I must take Gloria’s advice.When we got on the plane Marietta pulled out Rick Steve’s Paris where Rick instructed travelers to be “fanatically positive” and “militaristically optimistic.”As Marietta finished reading Rick’s instructions to me, I opened Frances Mayes Under the Tuscan Sun to page 145 where Frances quoted her nephew saying, “This trip (presumably his trip to visit his aunt in Tuscany) is life changing?” She goes on to wonder. “Did he know that at the outset. He had come to Italy looking for affirmation of a change he felt rising in him? I suspect not; he discovered this in traveling . . . Most trips have an underlying quest.”What’s my quest? I wondered. What was my father’s quest when he traveled? I know the answer to that. It was, in his mind, to conquer the world, to prove that the life he has and the country he inhabits are the best in the world. It is to reassure himself that what fate has given him and what choices he made were better than what others had in other parts of the world. He would always come back from a trip saying, “We have the greatest country in the world.”My mother’s quest? I know that too. To get the hell out of Arkadelphia, Arkansas. To see that there must be more going on somewhere. Though she has missed a lot in this small town she wasn’t going to die without knowing what she missed. And she didn’t.And Marietta’s quest.  It’s much like my mother’s, to scratch her curiosity itch, to grow, change, touch, see things she has never seen, to spark her imagination with new sights and sounds.And yes, like mother’s travel yearnings threatened my father, Marietta’s urge to travel threatens me. It implies that she could have done better. That somewhere in the world is a better way of life than I offer or a better, more interesting man than me. As I think about it I am sure that the answer is ‘yes’ to both, there is a better place than our house and a better man than me, and I’m sure I don’t want her to find it or him.And my quest? If I’m threatened by what Marietta might learn, why don’t I go on a trip alone? One thing is clear I don’t want to go alone. I don’t even want to go. But I’m going and according to Ms. Frances Mayes, I have a quest.The main thing that this inquiry teaches me is how afraid I am of going. I love being me in Nashville, Tennessee. Some people are foolish enough to call me doctor and pay money to come to my office, eager to consult with me. In my office, I have this rocking chair that I sit in. It’s my place. I belong there. I am dependent on my role here and on the roots I have planted that sustain me. I have a level of status and importance that I’m addicted to. Oh I would love to go to Italy as the important Doctor McMillan, where I would have a raison d’être and people who valued me and wanted me there. I would be happy to travel to Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, for example. But that was not an option.I was going to Paris and Italy as a marginal person, who had little or no connection to the people or the place. I was going to be even further diminished because I could not begin to speak the language. French, my college foreign language, was the only course I flunked. My attitude then was everybody in the world should learn English.If I had to go, I would agree to stay in the Tuscan villa where we had rented a two-room apartment. That way I could read and write and look at the view, but I wouldn’t have to go anywhere. I wouldn’t mind hibernating in a beautiful place for a time. But that wasn’t in Marietta’s plan.So, under protest, I had agreed to go wherever she led with her promise to take care of the static by learning the language, planning our itinerary and making the reservations. My role would be how to get there, lean back, criticize and edit her plans and preparations as our journey progressed. This role would at least give me some importance. It would be Marietta’s job to please me. That way there would be someone to whom I mattered, Marietta.But somehow I could tell that Marietta wasn’t going to put up with this. So I had to discover my own quest, my reason for going. I remembered the contrast of two parties I hosted. One was a party where all the guests were there because it was part of their job to be there. The other was a party where everyone felt fortunate to be included. Each of those excited guests had some special reason of their own that they wanted to be there.Marietta didn’t mind hosting a party for me, but the least I could do is come as a guest with his own agenda, my own wants and needs, my own special reason, and not in the “well if I must come, I will” posture.So what can my agenda be? What is my quest?I was interested in going to Paris to see my friend, Isabelle, her husband, Christian, and their children, Thomas, 19, and Charlotte, 16. Isabelle came to Nashville in 1986 to be with Christian while he completed training in cardiology research. She is a psychologist. She was in Nashville as a French psychologist with no Tennessee license and no connection to her profession. I took advantage of this and asked her to supervise me while she was here. She agreed. We met weekly for more than a year. I bought her lunch, she observed my 11:00 AM session from behind a one-way mirror and critiqued my work. She thought I did a good job so I really liked her.Marietta and I had Isabelle and Christian over for dinner. We met their children and enjoyed the whole Funck-Brentano family. I was eager to see Isabelle and her family again and renew our friendship. I was eager to learn how a French family lived and I hoped to get some insight into this new-to-me culture through the perspectives that the Funck-Brentano’s offered me. Yes, I was really interested in the Funck-Brentano’s and French people. Though I was not much interested in seeing things, I have always wanted to really get to know people from another culture and this was my chance. Yes Isabelle and her family were was part of the answer to the question: What is my quest?Lessons Learned:

1. Involve both people, at least somewhat in the planning process so that each person gets to plan something they will be excited about on the trip. This will require negotiation and compromise.
2. Talk about your fears about going on this trip with one another. Reassure your partner that you hear their concerns and that you will deal with them or do your best to mitigate them.
3. Have a quest: you don’t have to know what your quest is, but you need to be open to the fact that you have one. Hopefully the quest will be revealed to you before the trip is over.
4. Have a clear contract about how you expect your partner and companion to behave. Create clear role expectations or job descriptions that you both believe will be helpful on your trip such as time for museums and churches, free and rest time, flexibility of schedule, meals cooked together vs. eating in a restaurant, independent time vs. together time.

Chapter Two: Take OffOur trip began with the usual trip to the crowded airport, Nashville, international check-in, cross-examination about the whereabouts of our bags, and the potential threat they or we pose to airport security and world peace. As the plane took off for Chicago Marietta said, “We are finally on our way. I’ve been planning this trip for the last four months calling hotels, changing plans, calling hotels, changing plans. I am so relieved to be on the trip and out of the planning phase. I have worried so much about getting all the where’s and when’s right. Now all we have to do is follow the plan. Paris today. Isabelle will meet us; There five days; Then catch the train to Florence; There four days; Then rent a car and drive to Ieaosolana in Tuscany for a week; Then Cinque Terre, the fishing villages that you can only reach by train or foot for three days; Lake Como by train for three days, and finally one night at the Milan airport hotel and then on the plane for home.”“Whoopee, I’m so excited,” I said sarcastically.“David you promised you would adjust your attitude.”“Yes I did. But I didn’t agree to lie.”“So you are really not excited?”“Not yet. We have a flight to catch in Chicago. Remember the last transatlantic flight we took and the airplane sucked a flock of migrating geese through its jet engines and we had to get the plane back on the ground immediately. Remember the time we had rented a minivan in Scotland so that we would have enough room for my golf clubs and they gave us a thirteen-passenger bus to drive on the wrong side of the road.”“David, remember, Rick Seves said that to have a successful trip that you must be militaristically optimistic.”“Okay I’ll be positive. Everything unexpected that happens I will believe that it’s an opportunity to have a creative moment to share together with my fellow travelers.”“That’s the right words. Now get the right attitude.”“Ship of fools.”“That’s not the right attitude,” she said. “You promised.”“You’re right. I did,” I said. “I can’t help but enjoy teasing you some. I enjoy hrumphing, playing the role of the put upon beleaguered husband, suffering his wife’s pleasure.”“I know you do, but I don’t enjoy the role of the frivolous air-head wife whom you indulge. Travel expands one’s consciousness. Foreign countries challenge all your assumptions. With the right attitude you will expand your awareness. And I hope become a new man.”“So when we get home can I have a mistress?”“David you had better tread lightly.”“Okay, no mistress.”The plane landed on time in Chicago. We found our connecting flight, boarded. Once in our seats the steward approached.“Would you like a hot towel, a pillow, a blanket, or some juice?”I love hot towels wiping the oil and tension from my face.“Maybe this won’t be so bad,” I said to Marietta when I finished warming my face with the wet towel.“Good,” Marietta said and smiled warmly.Take off for Manchester was right on time. The pilot put the pedal to the metal and the nose turned up into the sky. Then suddenly the plane’s nose came down with a “slam” and a “screech”. The plane shimmed to a stop.“Ladies and gentlemen we discovered a red light that came on during takeoff. It’s a generator light. It is better for us to look at this on the ground than to worry about it in the air. We apologize for the aborted takeoff. We will pull off over to the side for a few minutes so that the ground crew can check our tires.”The steward emerged. “Would you like some juice, something to read?” Outside our window armies of fire trucks, emergency vehicles and men dressed in yellow fire suits gathered. They were either staring at the plane’s wheels or talking into a two-way radio pinned to their jackets. Men standing, staring, talking into radios continued. Twenty minutes later the captain’s voice broke the tension in the plane. “We will be debarking the plane. We have four flat tires, the brakes seem to be burned up and the landing gear has collapsed. So we will be switching you to another airplane. Buses will be here momentarily to take you back to the terminal.”“Thirty minutes later the buses arrived. A truck carrying a portable staircase backed up to the door. Men got out and scurried around the stairs. Fifteen more minutes passed. The captain’s voice crackled again through the speakers, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the portable deboarder is not extending to the door. It seems to be stuck.’“Can you imagine what might happen if we weren’t ladies and gentlemen?” I asked Marietta. I had visions of starting a riot and forcing our way out the emergency exits.“But we are.  Aren’t we David?” Marietta said.Eventually the stairs got to the plane’s door and we were all boxed into buses and driven back to the terminal building.As the buses pulled up at the terminal, several airline crewmembers were gathered outside. At first we thought they were there to meet us, but there were too many of them there just for that purpose.  Soon it became clear that this was not an airline gate but a bus transfer station for flight crews. A young stout woman with a British accent greeted us with the disappointing words. ‘Please go into the employee cafeteria and sit down until we decide what we are going to do next. We hope to assign a new gate to this flight.’ We were herded inside the small waiting area furnished in Jack-in-the-box plastic yellow and white booths and tables, a sign read capacity 150, not nearly enough for the 300 passengers.“We don’t know where to take you. As soon as they choose a gate for departure we will take you there and serve you snacks and allow you a phone call.”I grabbed a booth quickly staking out territory so that Marietta and I would have plenty of room. “Let’s sit here,” I said as I spread our carry on backpacks so that they filled the remaining seats in the booth. I sat down, but Marietta didn’t. I knew what she was saying without speaking, ‘I don’t want to be selfish with space while others are standing,’ and she knew what I was saying without a word being spoken. It was: ‘I don’t want to deal with, talk to strangers in such an awkward difficult circumstance and I expect you to appreciate my attempts to provide a comfortable setting for us.’She finally sat but not for long. “I’m going to get up and see if I can get some food from the vending machines. Do you want anything? ” What she really said was, ‘I’m uncomfortable taking up all this space so I’m getting up, hoping that you will share this embarrassing richness of seat space with someone standing.’My “No” response to her question: “do you want anything?” meant ‘don’t get up. That will make me have to defend this space all alone and after all I’m looking after us. How dare you leave me here in this position?!’A couple with a baby came over to me. The father was carrying the baby in a car seat baby carrier. “Are those seats taken?”“Yes,” I said defiantly. They walked away and my shame began to gather. Marietta returned. Her return meant, ‘if you wouldn’t give it up for a couple with a baby, nothing will get you to move over, so I might as well come back so you don’t look any worse.’This felt like the beginning of what happens to rats when there are scarce resources. Instead of solving the problem of working together to get free or to create more, the rats turn on each other. I felt that I was becoming a rat. The problem was with the airlines not my fellow passengers. Yet I had suddenly committed to the battle to be King Rat until the airline officials told us to go somewhere else.After thirty minutes the airline official came back. “Proceed to gate 54. We will have a new plane there.”Once at gate 54 another disembodied voice spoke to us. “Anyone needing to make a phone call please come to the desk and we will connect you with your party for free.”I found four empty seats I plopped down in one and put our bags in the other two, once again successfully staking out territory for us protecting us from the rabble. This time there was plenty of seating space for all of the passengers to spread out. Marietta sat with me for a while. Then Marietta looked at her watch and said, “oh two of our four hour layover in Manchester are gone. I wonder if there is a direct flight from here to Paris?”“I’ll sit here and you can go check,” I said.Marietta gave me a small disapproving glance and then said, “all right,” and she proceeded to get in line at the desk. She stood in line for thirty minutes. She waved for me to come over to her.  I did.“Stand with me. Do you want to spend the night in Manchester?”What this meant was, ‘I don’t want to be your lackey standing in line for you.’My answer to her spoken question was, “No, I don’t want to spend the night in Manchester and I don’t want to leave our luggage unattended.”I went back and sat down and that meant, ‘I’m exasperated, tired and worried and the only thing I can do to manage my anxiety is sit in my territorial bunker I have created with our backpacks surrounding me and keep my hands resting on the body pocket strapped around my waist under my clothes holding our traveler’s checks.’Marietta finally got to the front of the line. “Is there a direct flight from here to Paris? I’m afraid we might miss our flight in Manchester,” she looked at her watch. “We have only an hour to make that connection now and we haven’t even begun to get ready to board.”“No,” the answer came. “The direct flight to Paris left an hour ago.”Marietta returned to her seat beside me and said, “Now I know what they do with people who go to Paris with tickets bought with bonus airline miles. They send them to Manchester and make them wait four hours before they have board another plane to Paris. Or they have them wait four hours for the plane to take off from Chicago and then barely catch their connecting flight to Paris in Manchester.”“Marietta you are the one complaining and hrumphing now,” I said.“Well I’m worried that we might miss our flight for Paris in Manchester.”“Me too, but there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it,” I said. “Let’s grab our packs and go look for something to eat.”Just as we got up the airline staff rolled in the snack bags.“Oh let’s go get a slice of pizza,” I said.“I would much rather,” Marietta agreed. So we did and we sat at another gate away from the tension surrounding gate 54 and had a pizza picnic in the airport.The plane finally boarded.“Well our layover time is gone,” Marietta said as she sat down in her seat in the airplane. “If we get there in the allotted time we will be late for the Paris flight by five minutes.”I looked at her disapprovingly. “Okay I’ll be positive. The four hour layover in Chicago was probably better than the same four hours in Manchester.”“I agree,” I said.“How’s that for militaristically optimistic,” she said.“Pretty good.”This time the plane took off without incident. As it did I looked back at the terminal. The doted lines of lights above and below the concourse illuminate 30 empty, unattended baggage carts. I looked inside the windows of the concourse at the empty waiting areas. The airport was lifeless, haunted by the ghosts of the day’s activities.The flight over was uneventful. We both slept for a few hours. We arrived just ten minutes before our Paris flight was to take off. “I’ll get the bags and follow you.”“Okay,” Marietta said. “I will find out the Paris flight’s gate number.”Marietta rushed off the plane I followed. When I emerged from the plane Marietta was staring at a female airport attendant who was pointing her finger down a hall and saying, “customs this way. You must go through customs.”“But this is not our destination and we are late for our plane,” Marietta said. “Where is the gate for the plane to Paris?”“I’m sorry ma’am all passengers must go this way,” and she again pointed down the hall.I looked at the gate next to ours. It had “Paris” on the board. I tapped Marietta on the shoulder, turned her around to look.“Paris, that’s it,” she shouted relieved.We ignored the pointing woman and ran to the gate. There was no attendant at the gate. No one was waiting in their seats around the gate. We ran to the doors of the boarding ramp. I grabbed the door handles. The doors were locked. We both banged on the doors. “Anybody, open the doors! This is our flight! Let us on!”The pointing English lady came over to us with airport security.“You don’t understand,” I said. “This is our flight. We were late. They are about to take off without us.”“Come this way. Please,” the English lady insisted ignoring our pleas. An American Airlines version of the English lady approached.“Please get us on this plane.” We again plead our case.“You must go through customs first.”“Why,” I said. “This is not our destination. If we had flown directly to Paris, would we have had to go through customs to enter English air space?”“I’m sorry these are the rules. I didn’t make them. I will see that you get a flight to Paris. Please come with me.”With that we went down the hall escorted by security, the first pointing English lady and by the American Airlines English lady. We showed our passports at customs. The pointing English lady pointed up some stairs. “Please go here now,” she said.“No, I’m going to the gate to board the plane,” I insisted.“Yes,” Marietta agreed. “The plane is there.  Help us get on.”“All right,” the American Airlines English lady said. She looked at the other airport employees as if to say stupid Americans, humor them. She took us back to the gate and said, “your flight to Paris is an hour and a half late. We have not allowed the other passengers in the gate area yet. They should be down soon with gate attendants.”“Why didn’t someone tell us this before?” Marietta said exasperated.“We didn’t miss our plane,” I shouted. “Thank you,” I said to the American Airlines English lady.Once we were seated at the gate alone Marietta said, “I guess in England people do as they are told and don’t expect explanations.”“Where is that positive attitude, Marietta?” I asked.“We are not going to England, I will have my fanatically positive attitude up and going when we get to France,” she said.We boarded the plane for Paris and flew to Paris without further adieu. We both slept some of the way.As the British Airways jet landed, I said to Marietta, “We are about to leave the English language and fall into an ocean of French and we will drown.” she acknowledged this statement with a grimace, picked up her sac à dos (backpack) and walked out of the plane. While I awkwardly gathered my book, glasses, ticket and passport, she was pushed out of the plane in front of me, a first for us. Ordinarily it is me that impatiently waits outside the airplane door for the crowd to spit Marietta out to me. Quickly I regained my role of rushing to get in front of the crowd with Marietta behind, half of her trying to keep up with me and the other half stubbornly holding back, protesting my rushing for what appears to her to be for no reason.The dreaded customs (where they will hold us until our bags were searched and they find contraband or plant drugs in the corner of my briefcase) was straight in front of us after we walked a long corridor of gates of the Aéroport Charles de Gaulle. Thinking of our ordeal at customs distracted me so much that I almost failed to notice the light airy uncrowded friendly feeling of the airport. We were transported by moving sidewalks that traversed outside the building and back in again through plastic tubes. A tube delivered us to the custom counters. There a line formed. A uniformed man took my passport, looked only at the front of it and gave it back to me and I walked to the baggage claim with Marietta right behind me.The bags came. And so did the ocean of French speak. We walked to where the people meeting planes were waiting and there was Isabelle.“Hello,” she said.“Bonjour,” I said. And that was probably my first and last attempt to speak French.“Let’s take your bags to the car,” Isabelle said.I don’t know if I was ever so glad to see anyone as I was to see Isabelle’s familiar face and hear her speak to me in a language that I understood.

Lessons Learned:

1. Be “militaristically optimistic.” Hope at the beginning keeps you open to making lemonade from lemons. Something will not go according to plan so maybe your plan was wrong and fate is bringing you a valuable surprise.
2. Change Roles: It helps break the tension and lighten the emotional load if you take up your partner’s usual script. A relationship has just so much complaining. If you are the usual optimist look on the dark side for a time and see if your partner lightens a bit. If you are the curmudgeon complainer, try being the cheerleader instead and see if your partner doesn’t begin to complain.
3. Avoid bunkering down and isolating from fellow travelers. You can miss the opportunity to share difficulty, laugh together and make a new friend.
4. It is a wonderful luxury to have someone you know to meet you.

Chapter Three: Our French ConnectionIsabelle led us to her four door, full sized, Renault, loaded us in and began the transit from the Aéroport to the Hotel Central, in the Montparnasse section of Paris. “This hotel. I hope you like,” Isabelle began. “It is just fifty meters from our flat. We live in one of Paris’ Theater district. There are cafes, theaters very convenient. I can walk to my hospital to work from home. Christian’s hospital is further away. He rides his motorcycle to work. I worry, but he tells me he knows that he will die young. That does not console me.” Christian works as a cardiologist and scientist directing drug research studies in Europe.The chemin (interstate highway) was choking with cars. “It is the first of September, the French vacation time is over today,” Isabelle said. “People return to Paris. We have lots of traffic. Usually it is not so bad. ““Now how old are your children?” Marietta asked.“They were young when you knew them last. My son, Thomas, he is now nineteen. This spring he passed the exam that is required to get into medical school. Today was his first day of medical school. My daughter, Charlotte, just returned from camp in the U.S. where she studied arts. She is sixteen. She’s a dancer. Maybe she will dance for you or she could also sing for you. She is talented that way as well. My son also is an excellent musician. The piano is for Thomas his favorite instrument. He plays guitar too, but only recently. He has been playing piano since he was a young child. My mother-in-law teaches Thomas piano. My mother-in-law’s world revolves around Thomas. He was her first grand child. My mother-in-law teaches Charlotte piano as well.”I was surprised to see such unabashed pride in her children,[1] but I was certain that when she pressed Charlotte to perform for us that Charlotte would resentfully resist. Resistance and an accusation of ‘who are you to volunteer me to perform for your friends,’ would be a characteristic U.S. sixteen-year-old response.“Oh the hotel,” Isabelle continued. “There are three near our apartment. I went and checked the rooms in each one. This hotel is about 85 dollars. I hope that’s not too much.”We were pleased with such a low price for a hotel in Paris and told her so.“I sat on the beds in the hotels. Hotel Central had the best beds. I hope you like it. I thought you might want to lie down and rest a bit first before you come to dinner. Why don’t I call you at 7:30 and then I will come get you at 8:00 and bring you to our flat.”So that was the plan. It was 5:30 when we got to our room. Our room was on the sixth floor. It had a view of the Paris rooftops and yes, the bed was very comfortable. We had our own bathroom with tub, shower, sink, bidet, and commode with a window also with a view. It was very nice. When our bodies hit that bed we went straight to sleep. Isabelle called us at 7:30 to wake us, and she and Christian walked down to fetch us at 8:00.“This is a new apartment for us,” Christian said. “And Isabelle likes it very much. Before, we lived on the bottom floor of an very old five story building near Notre Dame. It was a rent-controlled apartment. We had a lot of room there. Plenty of room for guests, but here we don’t have so much room. There my study was large enough to have a guest bed.“But there the walls were four feet thick,” Isabelle said. “We were on the first floor. The light never penetrated down to us. The air was damp, moldy.  The moldy air aggravated Thomas’ asthma. Dust from the decaying mortar literally centuries old floated down on everything. I wanted to see sunlight where I lived. This apartment is perfect. It has skylights, a terrace, a summer and a winter kitchen.  We are on the top floor here and the sun comes into our windows and skylights. It is not blocked by apartments above us or neighboring buildings.”“Since we moved here,” Christian said, “Isabelle has begun to cook.  I used to do most of the cooking.”“It’s true,” Isabelle said. “I enjoy cooking now. I seem to have more energy for it. I really love the sunlight. In the summer we eat outside on the terrace for every meal that I prepare. I am so happy now. I knew I wanted something else, but I didn’t know how much happier I would be living here. Living near Notre Dame was a wonderful location, but we all love the sunlight we get here. Thomas may be home when we get there. Charlotte won’t be. She is at her dancing lesson with her Aunt Sophie.”“Her Aunt teaches her dance class?” Marietta asked.“Yes my sister Sophie has her own dance studio. She is a wonderful dancer and Charlotte loves to dance.”Marietta and I are especially interested in children, especially our friend’s children. Because of bad luck, poor reproductive equipment, and a biological mother deciding after all to keep her baby, we have no children of our own. We covet chances to observe, tend and care for children. Our professions disclose our obvious interest and dedication to children and families. I am a family therapist and Marietta is a judge overseeing one-fourth of the Nashville divorces. We were eager to get to know Thomas and Charlotte and to compare them with the children we knew in the U.S.We climbed the four flights of stairs to Christian and Isabelle’s home. It was everything they said light, open, airy, high ceilings, white walls many windows and skylights. We walked into the small sitting room near the kitchen and as we did a young man stood.“This is Thomas,” Isabelle said, and she made the introductions. Thomas had black wavy hair. He was thin and about 5’9”. His smile came freely and he shook our hands firmly.“Such a handsome boy. He looks like a Greek statue,” Marietta said once Thomas had retreated to his room.“Oh you think so! We are lucky to have him. He make us very happy.”Christian tended bar for us and got us each our preferred drink. Mine was scotch and Marietta’s was wine. Christian and Isabelle’s choices paralleled ours.We could hear a guitar riff coming from Thomas’ room.  “He can play the guitar very well for someone who had so recently begun to play?” Marietta commented.“Yes he does. He is an excellent musician. The piano, though, is his favorite instrument. He has been playing the piano since he was a young child. His grandmother, Christian’s mother, is a concert pianist and I told you already that she taught Thomas piano for years. She adores Thomas. I told you that too. He was her first grandchild and now he enters medical school like his father, his father’s father and his great grandfather.”“I can see why she adores Thomas,” Marietta said. “I adore Thomas too, handsome, talented, bright and dedicated.”“He makes us all very proud,” Christian said.Suddenly we began to hear piano music coming from Thomas’ room. The melodies flowed seamlessly from classical music to jazz, to blues and back again. It created a thoughtful and warm atmosphere. To us it felt like Thomas was performing to create the perfect before dinner ambiance.“I’m glad you got to hear Thomas play. He is very good. Maybe Charlotte will sing or dance for you,” Isabelle said.There it was again. Isabelle volunteering Charlotte to perform for us. It startled me and intrigued me.“Charlotte is special too. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”“Yes she is,” Christian agreed.“How was your trip?” Christian asked.I explained my reluctance to travel and the problems that this presented to Marietta, traveling with a difficult man.Christian admitted, “I do not enjoy tourist travel much either. I like destinations with a purpose - skiing, a business meeting, but I hate being without my professional role and since I can speak French, English, and German I understand how difficult it would be for you to be a stranger in a strange land, marginal, no status, no function, no leverage and without language.”Yes, I said, “When I’m a tourist traveler, I’m like Blanche Dubois in Street Car Named Desire who has to depend on the kindness of strangers and that is frightening to me.”“Moi aussi,” Christian concurred. “I would not want to be the person who returns from vacation in September only to endure their work and long for the next summer vacation. I love what I do. Although 40% of what I do I shouldn’t have to do. The people, the bureaucrats in administration are not good people. I must advocate for the people who work with me, when I shouldn’t. So I have to fight them. Those in the hospital administration should just do right, but they don’t. This takes up so much of my time. I don’t like that.”So, I surmised to myself. I am like my father, like Christian and many men, (and perhaps women too, but not according to Marietta) who are reluctant travelers. I can hear Marietta in my mind. “Yeah this is a man thing like not asking directions.” And perhaps it is.“Thomas that was beautiful music. Thank you for playing,” I said as Thomas emerged for dinner.“I have to play,” he answered. “Today was my first day back to school I am already feeling the pressure. When I feel this way I need to play. It helps me. I never know what my fingers are going to do. They just do what they do and I guess that expresses how I feel. I always feel better when I finish playing. I usually play for about a half an hour this time of day. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”Clearly he had not been playing to create anything for us. He was playing for himself, confident that we would enjoy it as well.Dinner was served. Isabelle seated each of us. Christian sat at the head of the table. Isabelle sat next to him. I sat across from Isabelle and Marietta sat next to me and across from Thomas, who was seated next to his mother Isabelle. Charlotte had a place set for her at the other end of the table across from her father. Thomas poured the red wine as we sat.The first course was French bread with butter and cantaloupe with prosciutto. The thin slices of salted pork were the perfect companion to the succulent, perfectly ripe melons. I had never had this dish before and I was to learn that it was served as the apéritif of choice all over France and Italy this time of year.This was followed by “bar,” a white fish that reminded us of sea bass, covered in a sauce made from fish stock, shallots, vermouth, wine and creme fraiche. This was served with quartered, roasted new potatoes that we had watched Christian finish earlier in the kitchen braising them in olive oil and turning them deftly by tossing them in the skillet.“Bravo,” Marietta remarked at Christian’s talented tossing of the potatoes in the skillet.“Oh thank you,” Christian answered. “I am a good cook. My specialty is Chateaubriand. I loved the béarnaise sauce so much as a boy that I learned to make it for myself. I have been cooking it since then.”We hear the door open. And in walks Charlotte. Charlotte had shoulder length black hair. She stood about 5’5” tall. She wore a lycra top and pants revealing a dancer’s figure. Her eyes pushed out intense energy and her smile stretched from ear to ear revealing perfect white teeth. How could anyone resist this Charlotte I wondered? I felt like being Maurice Chevalier and bursting out singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” when I saw Charlotte.“How was your lesson?” was her mother’s greeting.“It was wonderful. Mum, Aunt Sophie’s new apartment is exquisite. You must see it.”“I will,” she replied and then she introduced us to Charlotte, her beautiful daughter whose intense eyes and bright smile captivated all of us.“What were you dancing to?” Isabelle asked her daughter.“It was the Rose. The song Aunt Sophie danced to at her wedding.”I was entranced with the notion of a bride dancing down the aisle or at the alter or wherever to the Rose. I couldn’t resist testing Isabelle’s promise that her daughter might dance for us. So I just asked.“Charlotte, your mother said that you might dance for us. Would you?”“Not right now. I’m too tired, but do you go with us on Sunday to my grandparents home in the country.“Will you,” Isabelle asked.“Surely,” Marietta replied.“We would love to,” I said.“I have the music. I will take it and dance for you there maybe.”“Charlotte will you have something to eat?”“Yes, I will have some salad.”Salad was to be our next course, by this time the third course. The salad was mixed greens and oil and vinegar dressing.“I’m so full. I’m not sure I can eat another bite.” Marietta said.“Me too,” I chimed in. But somehow the salad seemed to release the fullness in my stomach. That was a good thing because we had another course to follow. It was fromage (cheese) and fruit.“This is Gruyere. This is reblochon. This is goat cheese and this is blue cheese,” Isabelle was pointing out the cheeses arranged on a platter with fresh figs, peaches, grapes and plums.“Thomas,” I inquired. “Do you get any other education beyond high school other than medical school?”“No I don’t,” he said. “And it frustrates me. My uncle is interested in politics and our family is not so much. I was listening to him discuss history the other day with a friend and I realized how little I knew of history, or philosophy, or religion. I won’t have much time learn those subjects. I feel ignorant and not well educated. I wish I had a chance to study these things, but our system does not allow it. Once in medical school all that I will have time for is medicine.”When Charlotte had finished her fromage and fruit she looked at Marietta and me and said, “May I be excused. I want to telephone a friend before it is too late.”“Surely,” Marietta said.“And David and Marietta,” Thomas said, “I won’t be going to the country to my grandparents with you. I will be spending time with my girlfriend. I’m sorry. And mother that reminds me. I must go. I’m going to spend the night at her house tonight.”“You can spend the night here with Séline if you want.” Isabelle spoke and gave me a glance that said I know you are watching this.“I know but Séline’s is so much closer to work and I must be there at 7:00 A.M.”And with that Thomas was gone.“That is sad,” Marietta said. “To be eager to learn more about the history, philosophy and religion and to not have the opportunity to explore that.”“Yes, but in our system young people are not thirty before they can begin work,” Christian said. “In your education system Thomas would be twenty-two before he could begin his medical training. He would be thirty before he began to do real work. That seems like too much school to us.”“You have a point,” I said.After dinner we said our good byes and walked back to our hotel. It was about 11:30 when we got to our room. As we began preparing for bed I said, “were those children amazing?”“What amazed me,” Marietta said, “was that they stayed at the table and were a part of the conversation and didn’t just eat and disappear. And the talent of Thomas. He can hear music, and make music at the same time.”“And did you see how Charlotte addressed us to be excused,” I said. “She didn’t ask her mother or father. She asked us. Have you ever known an American teenager to be so attentive to her parent’s guests that she wanted to be so careful not to offend?”“And then what about Thomas and his humility,” Marietta said. “Can you imagine an American nineteen-year-old male saying that there was a great deal that he doesn’t know and admitting that he felt stupid.”“No,” I replied, “especially not a nineteen-year-old me.”“Especially not a you,” Marietta agreed. “And then there is that beautiful Charlotte.”“Yes,” I agreed trying not to appear too enthusiastic.“Do you think her mother will get her to perform for us in the country?”“Yes I do,” Marietta said.“I don’t. I’ll bet you that Charlotte will not perform for us in the country tomorrow.”"Okay you are on. If I lose you don’t have to go to the Palais de Justice with me. And if you lose you do have to go.”“That’s a deal.”And with this bet made, sleep, sweet sleep, engulfed us. Lessons Learned:

1. Wherever you go, especially on the first part of a trip to a strange place, it is nice to have friends there. They help you manage your fears: They can help guide you through the tourist mazes: They can buffer the tension between you and your travel partner and they help you be on your best behavior.
2. If you have friends in the place you are visiting, stay in a hotel near your friends. You both have privacy. You also get to explore the neighborhood at your leisure.
3. Sharing with each other your cultural and family differences and similarities can enrich your trip.
4. Telling your friends the challenges that the trip presents for you as individuals and as a couple can help you obtain support and some guidance for how to make the best of your trip.
5. Children can be a delightful focus to share.

Chapter Four: À La CampagneThe next day was Sunday, the day we were to go to visit Isabelle’s parents. Isabelle and Charlotte arrived at our hotel with their car to pick us up at 11:00 AM. The trip to her parent’s home took about an hour and a half. Her parent’s home was referred to by her as “à la campagne” or “going to the country”. When we arrived the whole family came out to greet us. There was Sophie, Isabelle’s sister. Sophie’s husband Xavier. Their four-year-old twins Baptiste, a boy, and Ondine, a girl, and their oldest daughter Céleste who was a very serious seven-year-old. Flore, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Isabelle’s brother Olivie, was there as was Isabelle’s parents Jean-Charles and Danielle Guénot. Jean-Charles and Danielle had a three bedroom cottage with two guesthouses nearby for their extended family of children and grandchildren, which numbered vingt et un (twenty-one).The cottage sat on a well-cultivated acre with vegetable gardens, fruit trees, rose bushes and wisteria and begonia vines. Flat, off-white plaster walls framed the colors of the vegetation. (The colors that Parisian artist’s often choose as their palate was here in this outside world.) The green grass and red, orange, blue and purple flowers dispersed color everywhere. The smell of the fallen pears not picked mixed with the smell of roses and herbs cooking, as Jean-Charles sprinkled Thyme over the lamb that cooked on the barbecue. Here the land was flat. The yard backed up to a plowed field. After we were properly introduced and greeted we were served champagne with crackers with baked in cheese dots and other assorted cheese on crackers.We were told to bring our swimsuits because the small round above-the-ground pool in the yard was used to cool off hot sunbathers. The pool was set off to the side. In the center of the backyard was a long table with a red and white checked tablecloth set with wine glasses, water glasses, soup spoons, dessert spoons, the spoons and forks turned down, knives facing out. There were several small vases of flowers. After Jean-Charles had finished cooking the lamb medium rare we sat at the table.Each of us was given a special seat. (At our every meal in France the host took special care to seat the table.) We were sitting between Jean-Charles at the head of the table and Danielle. Isabelle had the seat across from me next to her father. Isabelle and Sophia were the servers with some help from the other girls.The courses came in the same order as Isabelle served the night before. The first course was melon and proscuitto. The second was the lamb, with green beans and fava beans. The next course was salad. There were two kinds of salads each with different tossed lettuce. Small round tomatoes in a separate bowl were optional. Salad coming after the main course startled us again. Then came fromage. (Cheese) - many different kinds,” Jean-Charles said.  “The blue cheese (Roquefort) is the best. You don’t get that in America. They won’t let in the bacteria and that’s the best part. The Roquefort is so strong, if you eat it first, you won’t be able to taste the other cheese. So eat the blue cheese last.”Two huge plates of fromage with small rounds of fromage de chèvre (goat cheese), sheep’s cheese, and one-quarter slab of Gruyere, a hard cheese that resembled what we know as Swiss cheese along with Camembert and the blue cheese. Gruyere was my favorite.I haven’t yet mentioned wine, but there was plenty, all red and all very good. Though I get buzzed easily by wine, I was never tipsy and I had my share of champagne and red wine. There was always water, l’eau gazeuse or l’eau non gazeuse. L’eau non gazeuse was tap water. We drank tap water everywhere in Paris, even though in the U.S. we were warned that it was not safe. Isabelle reassured us to the contrary. Perhaps that’s how Coca-Cola does so well in Europe. They send American tourists abroad thinking that they can’t drink the water.Here our fromage (cheese) course was followed by yet another course, fresh fruits with a sprinkle of sugar. Two large bowls with halved apricots and plums, raspberries, currants, and strawberries.Everyone spoke English so that we would feel included. Danielle told me about a trip to the Alps that she had just returned from with her nieces, Flore and Charlotte. Jean-Charles told me a bit about his career as manufacturer’s representative for a tanning equipment company. Isabelle watched over Marietta and me protectively.Suddenly the dishes and food disappeared and we gathered inside where we were offered tea or coffee or chocolate with coffee. Marietta and I took tea.Inside/outside is an important distinction. When eating in a French home we never ate inside. In fact we were in France five days and we had only one meal inside and that was in a restaurant at night.Tea was followed by an invitation to a walk in the forest. (We were offered bicycles too, but hiking seemed the better choice.) Isabelle put on her hiking boots and shorts. “I want to show you a view of a castle that was magical to me as a child,” Isabelle said. We drove two miles through the village to a trailhead in the woods. Clouds were gathering and we were offered rain jackets, which we took gladly. We started walking up a sand filled trail that also served as a creek bed when it rained. Crash, crackle, lightening struck nearby. Rain sprinkled. “Do you wish to continue?” Isabelle asked. We had parkas. We felt prepared, so onward we went. The floor of the wood was filled with ferns. There was no waist high undergrowth of briers and vines as there was in the Southern U.S. forests. The ground was green and soft with moss. Soon we came upon a stack of large logs waiting to be taken to a mill. Near that was an open field recently planted with pine seedlings. This was definitely a cultivated forest. Men worked this land just as farmers work their fields. Lots of money was spent caring for these trees and for the public as well who enjoyed walking under the trees. Paved bike paths intersected with well cared for hiking trails. Newly planted trees were protected with what looked like white plastic drainpipes.Though these forests were logged, even clear cut, they didn’t look like they had been raped as the forestlands in the U.S. appear after such a cut. These woods were state treasures.  The men who worked on them were obviously subsidized by the citizens that enjoyed them. The state provided the infrastructure for the wood to be harvested and for the people to enjoy their forests as parks. As I walked I wondered to myself whether the private U.S. timber industry could compete with French subsidized forests.^[2]Bang, crack. The sky suddenly opened and emptied a mix of rain and hail on us. Bang, crack, bang. This time lightening hit very near.  We walked on, but we are mouille jus quo os - wet to the bone.^[3](That was the first French phrase that I ever learned and perhaps because I learned it I was doomed to experience it in France.)The lightening unnerved Isabelle. In the Southern U.S. lightening is common and frequent in the summer. Marietta and I are less afraid, perhaps we are stupid, but we believe that the trees will catch the lightening strike first. We came upon a shelter. It was a small hut with a loft. Eight people, five adults and three children, were gathered inside waiting out the rain. It began to hail very hard. The hail made even more noise on the roof. The children climbed the ladder to the loft, but clearly didn’t want to disappear in the dark and gloom above. The only light came from the door.Isabelle talked to the others in French while we moved to the back disappearing in the dark until we heard Isabelle say “American” and the group turned to nod at us. We nodded back.The storm abated in about fifteen minutes and we were off again to find the beautiful view of a castle that Isabelle remembered from childhood.  We found the viewpoint, but the vista was now blocked by trees. We found another vantage point where we looked upon the castle.“As a child I had always imagined that an evil man lived there and I would make up stories about him,” Isabelle said.“Why wouldn’t you imagine a handsome prince, instead, who would come and rescue you?” I wondered.“I don’t know why.”“Was it because your parents knew who lived there and didn’t like him?” I wondered.“I don’t know.”“Or was it because you didn’t need to be rescued by a prince,” Marietta said.“I’m not sure,” Isabelle said. “I remember imagining that the evil man had an evil mean daughter. She thought she was a princess, but she was really a stuck up snobby little girl. I would look down on the castle and imagine that she and her snobby girl friends werehaving a party. The girls were dressed in white dresses with bloomers and petticoats. My sister and I would transform into Blackbirds and jump into the thorny wild raspberry bushes right there behind us. We and hundreds of blackbirds would digest the berries. As soon as we could feel the remains of the berries ready to process out of our bodies, I lead the flock of blackbirds over the snobby girls who are now riding a white pony and bombs away.In another version my sister and I were giant condors and we would swoop down upon the pure white princess riding her pony, pick her up and drop her in that pig mud at the farmhouse just around the curve in the road over there.”Yes, this was a grand castle, but in France it was just another castle. I was interested in what it meant to Isabelle as a child looking down on it, filled with fantasy and wonder. I felt complimented that Isabelle was sharing with us a scene  and her fantasies from her childhood. And I felt fortunate to catch another glimpse into Isabelle the person.We walked back at a fast pace, drove home and arrived soaked to find a furious Charlotte. “We are now behind schedule and tomorrow is my first day of school and I wanted to get to bed early.” (Another thing that was difficult for me to fathom.)Jean-Charles made a fire and Danielle boiled water for tea. I took off my pants and put on my dry bathing suit instead. I hung my pants and shirt in front of the fire. Danielle found a hair dryer and Marietta and Isabelle blew themselves dry in front of a crackling fire of pine logs and brush. They looked like two maidens turning and dancing before the fire. (This was to be the only dance I would see that day. No Charlotte performance).We drank the hot teas Danielle brought, reassembled ourselves and folded the four of us back into Isabelle’s Renault. Jean-Charles and Danielle walked out the gate in front of us protecting our exit, waving, and saying “au revoir.”  I will never forget the picture of this gracious, charming, handsome man and beautiful woman holding on to their children and their guests for as long as they could as they followed the car into the street protecting us from oncoming traffic and watching us until we were out of sight.Once on our way in the car I nudged Marietta and said quietly, “I won our bet.”Marietta didn’t acknowledge me. She said to Isabelle and Charlotte, “I’m sorry that we missed the performance.”Charlotte responded. “Well I had planned to dance for you with Aunt Sophie and my Cousin Flora, but they left before you got back.”That surprised me. So she would have danced for us if our walk hadn’t taken so much time, I thought to myself.“I’m sorry we missed that too,” I said sincerely.“Well tomorrow maybe I will sing for you,” Charlotte said.Again I was surprised. I had no category for this child, freely offering herself for our scrutiny. I was amazed, but remained skeptical.I changed the subject. “Why is the section of Paris where you live called Mt. Parnasse?” I wondered.Isabelle answered. “Most Parisians hate Montparnasse tower.”“What is Montparnasse?” Marietta said.“It is the tallest building in Paris. In all of Paris, except for Montparnasse, there are building codes forbidding anyone to build a building higher than six stories. Parisians love the sun. They don’t want to live in the dark corridors of skyscrapers.”“In Paris,“ Charlotte said, “just because you own the land does not mean that you own the air space above the land. Here we will fight over what is built for us to see. If it is not pretty to our eyes we won’t accept it.  I like Montparnasse myself.”“But many people think that its lines are boring and that it offers no visual interest,” Isabelle said. “It only blocks the light. The building might have been a French success if its dimensions had stirred our imaginations more, but a straight line up with a slight curve up one side was, to many, stupidly simple. If you are going to build something in Paris that commands attention it should be worth looking at.”“In France,” Charlotte offered, “this is a matter of strong public debate as much as sports, or politics, or the weather, are common subjects for discussion or debate among friends or strangers in the U.S.”“Oh look at the sunset, comme c'est beau. Isn’t it beautiful?” Charlotte said to me.“Yes,” I replied, but clearly that was not enough. This was an invitation to play a game that I couldn’t fathom.“Look at the colors,” Charlotte said. “You say hues of pink and purple. Doesn’t it look like a statue of a Greek God? See the head there and the robes. Is that what you see?”“I do now that you mention it.”A proper French person would have said. “Yes I see that, but do you see Tarzan swinging through the trees. See the dark purple is his hair and there the pink to the right are his hands grabbing the hanging jungle vines.”“Oh, yes,” might have been the reply, “and do you see the woman laying . . .” I imagine the French could have created a fascinating 30 minutes from this conversation where I could only reply “yes” or “no.”The sky, the pyramids in the Louvre, the television, the changes in the display at the Orsay Museum are all matters of consequence worthy of interest, debate and public concern in France. Most of the time, when you ask me about what is in front of my eyes, my reply is, “I don’t care, whatever.”There seemed to be a tremendous culture difference between France and the U.S. in the value placed on beauty, art and what the public sees. That’s certainly true if I am even a partial representative of our culture.Lessons Learned:

1. Pay attention to the food. It’s hard to miss in Paris (or in Italy). Eating, preparing, and shopping for food consumed hours as opposed to the minutes we spend in this country. Here food is fuel. In France and Italy food is art, a special creative gift to be shared.
2. Take advantage of opportunities to be with families. This is a rare precious treat. Participating in the familial relationship of another culture gives you a chance to feel normal and at home, while at the same time it allows you to see yourselves and your family from a different perspective.
3. Listen for cultural value differences. Be careful not to judge as differences emerge or your hosts will politely stop telling their passionately held values. Try to understand how useful these newly discovered values might be to their culture and how they might change how you see things.

Chapter Five: Paris, Our Last NightThe last night in Paris we invited the Funck-Brentano’s to have dinner with us at La Coupole. We knew that Christian and Isabelle would accept, but we were pleasantly surprised that Thomas and Charlotte agreed to come along as well. Once there and seated at a table Christian asked.“How was your visit to Notre Dame. You know we lived near there. It was in the center of everything in Paris.”“Oh no, don’t ask David about Notre Dame,” Marietta said. Marietta then responded as if the question were asked of her. “Notre Dame was magnificent. The rose window was awe inspiring, but we didn’t get the full effect. The sunlight was blocked because of remodeling. The tapestries were something I was not prepared for. I had never heard or read about them. They represented scenes from the Old Testament Bible stories. The thing that took my breath away was the vaulted ceilings and their arch supports. When I looked up I just had to sit down because I was overcome by the vastness above me. What made the greatest impression on me was the history of Notre Dame. It is seven hundred years old. It took two centuries to build and it was the place where kings were crowned, Joan of Arc was tried and Napoleon was invested as emperor. We were walking where Napoleon, Josephine, Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette^[4] walked. The building is the epitome of Gothic Architecture, with massive arches, flying buttresses and huge windows. It was just too much to comprehend.”“It was too much,” I said.“David, don’t.”“Don’t what?” Christian asked.“David didn’t see what I saw. He only seems to see the negative.”“And you don’t want him to hurt our feelings,” Isabelle said.“That’s right.”“Oh he won’t hurt our feelings,” Christian said. “David tell us your impressions of Notre Dame.”“It was built by all volunteer labor? No one was paid. Is that right?” I began.“That’s right,” Christian answered. “All for the Pope, the King, France and the glory of God. While they built Notre Dame they had to be merchants, farmers too. Paris at the time, was really a small village. The people were poor. What did you think?”“I was overwhelmed by the size, its ceilings and its windows,” I said. “But this took years and years of poor people’s lives for no pay. Nine generations were consumed. The people who carried those stones were the real hunchbacks of Notre Dame. It seems awful to me that the church exploited the poor that way.”"And the state,” Isabelle chimed in. “Building Notre Dame was supported by the Kings. The state wanted the poor to see the King as God or a representative ordained by God. Notre Dame was the center of all the state functions. The Kings were crowned there.”“That doesn’t seem right to me. It seems like the Church and the state exploited the people,” I said. “And Notre Dame was not built to be a place of communal worship. The Nobility had boxes raised above the floor. Peasants were on the floor, but far away from the altar. The priests spoke Latin, but that wouldn’t make that much difference because most of the people could not hear them in a building that large.”“Putting a spiritual purpose onto work possibly gave that work special meaning,” Marietta suggested. “Perhaps people believed it was a privilege to work on Notre Dame.”“Maybe they believed that they were working to get into heaven,” Christian conjectured.“I don’t know but Sainte-Chapelle, the chapel across from the Palais de Justice, was even more creepy to me. It had two floors, the first for the servants and commoners and the second floor for the nobility.  The first floor was painted with symbols of the state, castle turrets, fleur de lys, lions and the like. There were religious symbols too, but they were so surrounded by the symbols of the king that it seemed to be encouraging the peasants again to confuse God and King.”“Well that was the point,” Christian agreed.“Sitting in Sainte-Chapelle made me think of the Boy Scouts in the U.S. and Hitler’s Brown Shirts, Germany’s version of the boy scouts in 1938. ‘For God and Country?’ I hope somebody is telling the American Boy Scouts that God does not necessarily agree with everything our country has done, such as selling slaves, or slaughtering Indians or polluting the earth with plutonium. I hope that America is worthy of its blessings, though I know that is not always true.”“David this is just more of the same from you,” Marietta said, “wherever you go you are still there. You bring with you your cynicism, even to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We live in a class society in America. We are privileged to be able to travel here. How can you despise the French nobility and not despise yourself?““But Marietta, David’s observations are correct,” Christian said. “These buildings and their art were meant to subjugate the French people. This betrayal of the ordinary man is one of the reasons we French don’t go to church.”“Versailles is even worse,” I said. “It makes Notre Dame, as grand as it is, look like a cheap postage stamp. It takes up sixty four square miles, 8 miles X 8 miles.”“Oh David, Versailles was amazing,” Marietta said. “It was home to Louis XIV, XV and XVI, Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon and Josephine. It was where the treaty that ended World War I was signed.”“Yes, the Treaty of Versailles created the atmosphere in Europe for Hitler to exploit the fears and anger of the Germans,” I said. “It made World War II inevitable.”“Marietta,” Christian said, “David is right again.”“Versailles,” I began again, heartened by the support, “was the place where Louis XIV gathered his nobles to carouse and gamble. Here he appealed to their base instincts and impulses so that they all became indebted to him through their gambling losses or afraid of what he might tell their wives. They became so emasculated by Louis’ indulgences that Louis, the Sun King, was free to rule France as he pleased.”“But David,” Christian said, “Louis XIV was a successful despot. He won most of his wars as you can see by the paintings of his victories in the famous Versailles War Room.”“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “But what got me were the Sun King’s excesses. I have no idea what his wars cost in lives and money, but the Versailles brochures said that building this place took one half of France’s gross domestic product for one year. Today that would be trillions of dollars just for a place for the king and his friends to play. The wallpaper was marble. Gold was everywhere. The extravagance seems unconscionable to me.”“I don’t care for it either,” Isabelle said. “It’s too much. I never liked going there. I think the only thing worth seeing would be le Petit Trianon and le Grand Trianon the buildings where Louis XIV kept his mistresses. Next time I will go with you and Marietta. We will just go there. The rest is too much, just more of the same.”“Yes, yes, yes, yes. Isabelle agrees with me. I’m not crazy,” I said.And Christian comes in to affirm my position. “One pretty thing is like another. Why go see a pretty thing? I hate to travel.”“Oh Christian,” I said. “In the Orsay Museum in the Opera section I saw a painting that makes the point. It is of a man and woman in a loge box at the opera.”“I know that painting,” Christian said. “It is by Eva Gonzolas. The woman is hanging over the rail looking through opera glasses at the stage with great interest and enthusiasm.”“Yes,” I said. “And the man is one of us. He was standing behind his wife with a bored expression looking away from the stage.”“You can tell can’t you that his wife dragged him to the opera,” Christian said, “and he was trying to hide his disdain and lack of interest for the melodrama that so fascinated his wife.”“Even in 1874 there were men like us who had difficulty being an onlooker,” I said.“Oh David, now tell them you didn’t enjoy dancing in the hall of mirrors,” Marietta challenged.“Well yes, I did enjoy that.”“What about dancing in the hall of mirrors?” Isabelle asked.“We had finished walking through the series of rooms,” Marietta said. “We were, just the two of us, wandering among organized clumps of tourists with guides speaking every imaginable language. When we turned into the hall of mirrors one of the guides began to sing the tune of a Strauss Waltz, the Blue Danube I think. David grabbed my hand and we began to waltz to his rendition. He kept singing and we kept dancing for a couple of minutes until everyone was watching us and David got embarrassed and stopped. That was a great moment. Even you must admit that David.”“Yes it was,” I agreed, “but even the hall of mirrors was outrageously ostentatious as well.”“David I agree, “Isabelle said. “The Versailles is ridiculous extravagance, materialism at its worst. You are right. But, David, Versailles is not France anymore than Bill Gates and movie stars and their mansions are America.”“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Think about French fashion and these anorectic girls walking down the runway in those ridiculous outfits. I wouldn’t wear those clothes. Mother wouldn’t either. Have you seen anyone wearing those outfits on the streets of Paris? No.”“Louis XIV is why we had the French Revolution,” Thomas asserted. “His excesses taught the common Frenchman that the Kings didn’t care about the people.”“What is French is being free not to attend to the whims of fashion and to dress however we want,” Isabelle said.“Yes, they are right,” Christian said. “Being French means being artistic and being free to express and be yourself. See that man walking in front of the window?” Christian pointed to a man who was wearing a dirty T-shirt, eroding shorts, and deteriorating sandals. He was unshaven, and his hair a mess. “You assume in the U.S. that this man is homeless and psychotic. Here we assume that he is an artist; that he has chosen to pursue his art above all else. In the U.S. you look down on a man who looks like that. Here we accept his independence and respect the sacrifice that he has made for his art. That’s French, not the Versailles.”“It is the devotion to beauty and art that the French brought to Notre Dame and Versailles that is French,” Thomas said. “Our ancestors put the glass in Notre Dame’s windows and painted the ceilings in Versailles. We are proud of the beauty they created, even though we don’t anymore think much of ideals this art promotes.”All through this conversation the waiter had been getting our orders, bringing food and carefully attending to our wishes. At this point the waiter came to our table from another table where he had just helped a patron light a cigar. He approached Thomas with his lighter. It was a knife and lighter in one. He spoke to Thomas in French. Thomas took the lighter and extended the knife blade. Then the waiter pulled out a Minnie Mouse lighter and showed that to Charlotte. Then he began pulling out an endless supply of unusual lighters, one that looked like a telephone, another appeared as a sculpted nude, another was a car and there were many more that I can’t remember.Isabelle refocused our conversation by asking, “What do you think about your President Clinton and Monica?”“Well . . .”and I gave my discourse about the abuse of the position of the presidency and the difference in ages between Monica and the President and Clinton’s probable sex addiction.Charlotte laughed and shook her head. Christian smiled knowingly at Charlotte. Isabelle spoke for them. “It happens all the time. Does it matter where the President sleeps as long as he is doing a good job? In France it is a private matter. We don’t care. What’s the big deal? It is regrettable that the President will have a mistress, but nobody cares. In France we don’t care so much as you do in the U.S. about private sexual relationship, but on the contrary we care more about money issues and experience much shame around money bribery and corruption. Where you in the U.S. don’t care at all about such scandals because money concerns trade and business is quite O.K. for you. So U.S. people are stymied with sex where the French are with money. Money is dirty here. Sex is not. The mistress becomes a public figure sometimes. She is appreciated and respected for the role she plays in the life of the President. She is not the subject of ridicule and humiliation.”“Are mistresses common in French families?” Marietta asked.“You think that mistresses are very European No?” Isabelle responded. Before I had to time to reply Isabelle went on. “French women will expect her husband to be faithful. Mistresses may be common among the wealthy and famous, but they are not accepted. When a wife or husband discovers the existence of a mistress or a lover, it is always perceived as a rival and it raises a conflict in the couple. Sometimes an arrangement can be found but it is rare.”“Christian,” Marietta said, “your father, when he was alive he was a prominent French physician. Did he have such an arrangement?”Isabelle laughed and smiled at Christian, “Oh no,” she said. “Christian’s parents were very much in love and very faithful to each other.”“In France,” Christian said. “We believe that everyone has a right to a happy healthy sexual relationship. If your marriage is not happy or if your mate becomes less interested in sex, then perhaps a lover is an unfortunate necessity. And in France this is a private, personal decision. It is nobody’s business. And for the rich and powerful French, well that is common for them to have many affairs. It is difficult for these people to contain their impulses. Middle class French life is very different from the life of the French elite. Privilege has its benefits and its excesses. Isn’t it the same for the American middle class? Do you behave like the movie stars and the presidents?”“No we don’t. You are right,” Marietta said.There was obviously a strong monogamous value in this family. They were highly moral, but in ways that seemed practical, forgiving and kind.As we were finishing the meal and waiting for the check, Thomas looked at me and then his mother and asked, “May I be excused? I am going to see some friends and then I will spend the night with Séline.”“That’s fine,” Isabelle said.This was a nineteen-year-old Thomas again spending the night with his girlfriend. I asked sixteen-year-old Charlotte, “what does it mean that Thomas is spending the night with his girlfriend?”“What do you mean?” she asked.“Well what does that mean for you Charlotte? Will you be able to sleep at your boyfriend’s house at nineteen?”“Eighteen,” Charlotte said quickly. “That was how old Thomas was when he started dating seriously. I don’t know when it will be for me. My parents are very protective. I don’t think I will ever be old enough for my father.”As we sauntered the three blocks to Isabelle and Christian’s apartment Marietta commented, “In most American families it would present a problem for Thomas to spend the night with his girlfriend.”Before this comment could be responded to Charlotte interrupted with a request. “Mom, I want to go on home and get there before you guys, can I go now? I want to be prepared when you come.” And she looked at Marietta and me and smiled.“Yes, go ahead,” Isabelle said.“How did you decide to accept Thomas’ active sex life?” Marietta brought up the subject again.“Well my parents opposed me,” Isabelle said. “They would wait up for me until I got home. I never spent the night with a boy. My mother said she didn’t sleep until I got in. They had this barking dog and I could not sneak back into the house at night.“But Thomas needs to stay at home as long as he can. He can’t afford to rent an apartment yet and we can’t afford to rent one for him. And it is easier for Thomas if he can live at home. I want him to live with us as long as he can. So I invite his girlfriend to stay here when he wants her to.”“What about Charlotte?” I wondered. “When will it be acceptable for her to have an active sex life?”“I don’t know. I don’t think she is ready for that right now.  I think she kisses passionately maybe, but I’m not sure that she wants more than that now.”“But when she does it will be okay with you?”“I suspect it will have to be, won’t it?”“And she can have a male friend spend the night?”“I don’t know. We will have to see.”Sex of course is a difficult thing to inquire about, but my projection on to the slice of middle class French life that I was seeing was that sex was a personal and private matter. It seemed that everyone, even a child at sixteen, had a right to begin exploring the building of a healthy sexual relationship.  It is an important part of a happy marriage.In the Funck-Brentano family a healthy sexual relationship^[5] is what their children aspired to as they begin their preparation for marriage.The point is that it is nobody’s business. If one’s marriage was not happy then perhaps a lover is an unfortunate necessity in France, but it is nobody’s business. And for the rich and powerful, well, that is common for them to have many affairs in France. It is difficult for these people to contain their impulses.  Privilege has its benefits and its excesses. The same people who wore French fashion probably had affairs, but these were not “the French people” anymore than Americans are all movie stars.As the conversation ended we walked into the Funck-Brentano apartment. Charlotte called to us. “Come upstairs I am ready to perform now. I’ve re-read the words I want to sing.”We walked upstairs to a candle lit room Charlotte had prepared for us. She began. “I’m not going to dance. I would need more room and I would be too self-conscious to dance by myself, but I will sing for you.”“Great. We’ve been looking forward to this,” Marietta said.“I know Bette Midler’s The Rose,” Charlotte offered. “Is that okay?”“Sure,” I said.And Charlotte began. “Some say love . . .”And she sang perfectly, on key without any music or accompaniment. Her rich young voice filled the room. Her eyes pushed the words into our hearts. We were completely mesmerized. When she finished we could barely respond.Eventually I was able to speak and when I did speak I could not stop asking questions. “Do you enjoy performing?” I asked. “Surely you must. With a voice that full and with perfect pitch this is a talent that you enjoy sharing, isn’t it? Do you think about singing professionally? You are young, beautiful and with this incredible talent, oh what you could do with this! I can see how you could become a star.”I couldn’t help but want for Charlotte to succeed with her talent. Here she was young, beautiful and talented, able to speak perfect American English. Surely she had ambitions of being a movie star or a singer. So I said, “Charlotte you must find a way to get an audience for this talent. Do you sing in school or with a band?”“Oh, no,” she laughed. “Pas du tout, not at all. I’m very shy, really. I do prefer singing to a larger crowd. It’s easier than singing for you in my house, but I sing for myself and for my friends. I sing because I love to sing. I don’t want to be a star. I’m taking physics and math and I want to be a doctor or a scientist. I do music, dance and art for fun.”And she does. After school on one day a week she takes dance, on one day she takes piano from her grandmother, on another day she takes drawing lessons. It is common forher to get home at 7:30 or 8:00 from these activities. She then must do her homework. “I’m lazy she says. I have to watch thirty minutes of television. I love to watch Friends. I can’t afford to be lazy. I want to be a researcher in biology or something like that. And oh yes, I need to study my math now because tomorrow is a school day. Would you please excuse me?” And with that the wonderful Charlotte disappeared.I wasn’t sure what I had just witnessed. Was it the difference between French and American youth or was it this extraordinary family. All I knew was this was a unique moment in my life, to be serenaded by a daughter of a friend who could trust us and trust herself to take such a risk as this. Or maybe, for the French, sharing talents as Thomas and Charlotte did is not a risk at all. Perhaps it is just what French friends do together. They share their artful talents.I don’t really remember saying goodnight to Isabelle and Christian. I was so entranced with Charlotte. When we got back to our room I was noticeably silent, still caught up in my memory of Charlotte singing.“She was incredible,” Marietta said.“Yes she was and is,” I agreed.“And so is Thomas. He loves music for its own sake just like Charlotte. How did these children learn this?”“I wonder if they are typical French children?” I said.“No they are not typical of anything,” Marietta said. “They are exceptional children no matter what their reference group.”“I wish I knew what about them is French. Surely their ease with sharing their talent is part of the French culture’s artistic expression.”“I don’t know,” Marietta said, “and neither do you.”“I am amazed,” I said.“And you should be,” Marietta answered.“We’ve got to go to bed because tomorrow we leave at huit heures.”Lessons Learned:

1. While observing another culture’s treasures think about the human cost and historical context. Understand these symbols in their historical context. In this way you may understand why this symbol is valuable to its people.
2. Talk openly about your feelings and impressions to each other and to your hosts. This will create an interesting frank discussion that will help you understand the culture.
3. If you have the nerve, talk about things that might seem taboo. Because you are a foreigner your lack of tact might be forgiven. Pointed questions asked naively for only the purpose of understanding can create for you and your foreign friends an intense and intimate give and take conversation.
4. Attending to the vitality and the development of young people in another culture can create magical moments that you will never forget.

Chapter Six: The Train to Florence“I miss Paris already and we haven’t even left,” Marietta said as we waited for Isabelle to come to take us to Gare de Lyon. “This will probably be the only good part of the trip. We have two and a half weeks to go of you complaining about me dragging you around Italy ‘walking and looking.’ I can hear you now.”“I wish we could take Isabelle, Christian, Charlotte and Thomas with us,” I said.“David you can’t travel to new places in a womb protected by Isabelle. Where is the risk in that? The excitement of travel is living without the protection of the familiar.”“Getting to know Isabelle and her family was exciting,” I responded.“Yes, but you can’t always have this kind of security on a trip. I want us to be able to travel to places where we don’t know anybody and still have a good time.”“Well we don’t know anyone in Italy,” I said.Isabelle arrived. “We are running a bit late,” she said. She grabbed one of our bags and headed toward her double-parked Renault. We loaded the bags in the trunk and headed to Gare de Lyon, one of the six Paris train stations that had all the connections to Italy.Isabelle drove into the train station parking garage.  We had to descend several levels below ground before she found an empty parking place. Then we went through the door that led away from the trains and to the street. “We are going wrong,” Isabelle announced before we had gone too far. “Hurry we have to go back.”We turned around and eventually found ourselves inside the station. “The train is ready to depart. You don’t need to check in, just get on the train,” Isabelle told us.We found the train to Milan, loaded our bags on the train and found seats. “Where are the tickets?” I asked.“I can’t find them. Let me look in your backpack,” she said. “They are not in there,” I said irritated. “Look it’s your job to keep up with the tickets.”“I put them in there because my backpack was too full.” She unzipped the front pocket of my backpack and pulled out the tickets. “Here they are,” she announced proudly. “Now get off my case.”Isabelle watched as we bickered, then she handed us a sack of croissants. “Here, these are for you to have on the train.” She hugged us goodbye. We settled in our seats and Isabelle appeared again at our window blowing us a kiss and mouthing, “goodbye” and “aurevoir,” just as the train began to move out of the station.“I’m sad to leave Isabelle,” Marietta said.“I am too. Isabelle seemed sad to see us go, but I’m sure part of her was relieved to be free of us.”“Yes, we were a burden, especially you were.”“Well that’s true, but I’m looking forward to this train ride,” I said. “It’s not walking and looking. I won’t feel like I have to listen to a lecture about history or art or read a guidebook. I expect the French countryside will be beautiful and we will see as much of it as the TGV (the name of the high-speed French train) will let us at 150 mph.”The scenery as we left Paris and moved into the countryside mesmerized us. The land just out of Paris was flat, rich farmland. The fields were bounded rectangles some with trees at the fences, some with just fences and a few with neatly trimmed hedges. This land was loved like a good husband would love his wife, plowed and tilled carefully and fully with not one inch of dirt missed. The earth was that purple hue of rich land, recently harvested and plowed.Crops were mostly harvested this time of year. There were several fields of what looked like corn to us with stalks not yet cut down by the big tractors and tassels head high. There were fields that were barely pushing up something green from the earth, that we imagined was winter wheat.After a time Marietta broke the silence. “David, I’m not really mad at you about your views on Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle and Versailles. What I had hoped was that somehow we would see these famous places and be touched, blessed by the beauty. You were touched, well I would say you were provoked and that’s the point of coming to a new place, to be moved in some way. The part of you that was opened was your compassion for the common man.”“Yes, maybe,” I replied. “I think it is the argument churches have over the organ fund.”“I don’t get the connection,” Marietta said.“When I was a boy my grandmother started a fund for the church organ. When she died my mother spearheaded the effort. I didn’t get it then and perhaps I still don’t. Is it better to spend money on an organ or to give it to the poor? It always seemed to me that investing in beauty and music rather than in humanity was not Christian.”“But beauty can be shared by everyone,” Marietta said, “and music knows no class. We all need inspiration. You may be too thick for the awesome ceilings and windows of Notre Dame to reach your spirit, but reaching the human soul is the point of the church and beauty and music are one of the best ways to inspire hope, love and compassion.”“You are right I may be too thick.”Silence returned to us. As we traveled further away from Paris the less tilled land there was and the more flat land became relieved by rolling pastures and forests. There were rowed plantations of what looked to me to be sycamore or poplar trees. There were many pine forests, some just forty-acre plots dropped in the middle of rolling pastureland.The Alps suddenly jumped out of the earth about half way to Milan. They were grand. Not so dramatic as our Rockies, Wasatch and Tetons, because their tops were rounded smooth and their slopes were covered in vegetation as if someone had dropped soft green clothes here and there up the mountains.Yes trout streams flowed from the mountain snow bladders. The water ran fast, clear and shallow over smooth rounded granite rock speckled white, dark gray, brown and black. Not far into the folds of these mountains were ski chalets and lifts.“Wouldn’t it be fun to come here to ski,” Marietta stated.“Yes but the rich green of this vegetation suggests heavy, slushy snow that turns to slick ice. It won’t give us that soft Utah powder that we are used to,” I replied.“Yes but . . . Mr. Enthusiasm-for-something-different is here.”“You just want to come here to say you skied in Europe,” I said.“No,” Marietta said, “skiing in Europe is more open. You ski the whole mountain. The slopes aren’t groomed and you can ski from one small town in the Alps to another if you have a guide.”“Not groomed,” I said, “that sounds like fun. I can barely ski the perfectly groomed Wasatch Mountain slopes much less the bumps in the Alps.”“That’s why I want to come here to ski, maybe you will fall off a cliff and I will get the insurance,” Marietta said. “Then I will rent a man when I need one, a ski instructor when I want to ski, a tennis pro when I want to play tennis, a sailing teacher when I want to sail. And if I want to have sex I can hire a gigolo to please me. Then I wouldn’t have to put up with a man like you all the time.”I didn’t have a ready reply. After a moment Marietta saved me by changing the subject.“David, Isabelle and Christian seem to be very happily married. Yet they seemed to accept the idea of a mistress so easily. Do you think there is a mistress or a lover in their marriage?”“No I don’t. They seemed to admire Christian’s parents’ monogamous devotion to one another too much to accept such a triangle. And you saw Isabelle’s parents, the patriarch and matriarch of a large extended family. These relationships look fulfilling and satisfying in and of themselves. I don’t see mistresses, lovers and affairs in this family. But what do I know?”“It’s hard for me to put this puzzle together,” Marietta said. “Such wonderful healthy children, such open values and monogamy without the restraint of guilt.”“So you would have an affair or take a lover if you were free of guilt?” I asked.“Perhaps, . . . probably not me . . . at this age. But you would and if you did I would make you sorry. So you better feel guilty.”“So our hotel room looks out over a noisy plaza,” I complained, avoiding my guilt and taking refuge in my role of trip critic.“Wherever the room is, I’m sure you will find something wrong with it.”Our bickering gave us the proper distance to prepare us for the transition into Florence. When we arrived in Milan, we didn’t realize that the train to Florence departed just fifteen minutes after we arrived in Milan. Somehow we both thought that we had an hour to spend in the Milan train station. Because of this misapprehension we did not catch the significance of our train being seven minutes late until Marietta glanced at the tickets that read “departs 15:10.” This still didn’t register until I asked, “What time is 15:10? That’s 3:10, oh my God it is 3:05. Where is the train?”That was the question, but no ready answer appeared. We stared down the Gates with the trains in line behind them trying to interpret the signs. Several of the options seemed likely to be the one. None of the Gates gave Firenze (Florence) as a destination. One had Nice, another Venice. Yes, they probably went through Florence. One train had a sign reading Napoli (Naples) and a conductor standing nonchalantly by, his back turned to us one hand on the boarding banister and talking to someone. I don’t know why, but I thought that surely you must go through Florence on the way to the tip of Italy, (Naples or Napoli.)Marietta ran back to find someone to ask. I ran ahead to the conductor somehow knowing that this Napoli train was it and Mi Dio it was. We got on and the train left the next second. Marietta spent the whole rest of the way to Florence repeating, “How did you know? That was amazing that you knew. I loved being the hero, but I knew that this praise would be short-lived.”This Italian version of the high-speed train was not quite as nice as the French TGV. Outside, the sides of these trains were painted with graffiti. Some of it beautifully done, some of it not. The trains looked a bit worn inside as well. The seats were comfortable, but the ambiance was overwhelmed with men speaking, sometimes loudly on cell phones. The sounds changed from French Q, R, and A, sounds to Italian issimos and oras, si’s.While the scenes we saw in France were predominantly rural. The scenes we saw from Milan to Firenze were urban. In France the emphasis in window treatment for houses had to do with letting in sunlight. In Italy builders had awnings on every window and the awnings shaded or covered any window receiving direct sun.I suppose French rooftops were interesting too but they didn’t catch my attention like the Italian tile roofs we saw on the train. There were round clay tile and square clay tile. Some of the square tiles were the size of our wood shingle and some were the size of large cookies. Surely these roofs were the most expensive part of building a house.The train stopped several times. As it got close to the time for our arrival we had to get off the train a few times to be sure we were not in Firenze. As the train pulled into the Florence station “Firenze” was announced.“We made it thanks to my husbands intuitive choice of the right train,” were Marietta’s first words.I knew what this adulation was all about. It was to shift my psyche into gratitude and interest and away from my curmudgeon self.“Whoopee,” I said refusing to relinquish my soul to her. “We made it to Florence, the walking and looking capital of the world.”But we were both rightly proud of that fact. We felt like we had taken the test of: Can you travel on a European train unescorted? And we had passed. Hooray for us. We were pleased with ourselves.Lessons Learned:

1. Making connections is an important part of a successful trip. It is nice to have someone there to help take on the worry for you of “will we make the train,” getting there on time and changing correctly from one train to another is a source of pride for the traveling couple. It can also be a source of irritation or worry. It gets easier.
2. Traveling by train during the day offers several advantages. You can see the land and from the way the people treat the land, you can learn something about the people. Traveling by train means that someone else is driving so you can give you full attention to the vistas, each other, a nap, a book or watching your fellow passengers.
3. Remember there will always be turbulence at the boundary. As you change from one part of the trip to another, tension will arise. Fears will be expressed in bickering. Don’t take this seriously.

Chapter Seven: Finding Omens

To prepare for this trip we watched movies set in Italy. In one, a Room with a View, the female and male protagonists witnessed a murder just after arriving in Florence. In the movie this event served as an omen and an invitation. After these two witnessed this powerful event they had a knowing that would haunt them until they someday claimed what they knew. Once having shared this experience they were never the same.Two such metaphorical events happened to us upon our arrival in Florence. The first happened just as we stepped off the train. We gathered our luggage to start the walk toward the taxi stand. As we turned to begin Marietta discovered, there lying in front of us, a woman recovering from an epileptic seizure. Her body was very still and she was lying on her side. Her clothes were composed. Her head lay on her purse with her hands clasped together under her chin. A small crowd gathered about her. Three of the crowd members were police. We didn’t stop, figuring she didn’t need two more faces gawking at her and we saw that she was well attended.We were both stunned and sobered by this event and we quietly made our way to the taxi stand. Marietta was the only one of us who dared annotate it with the question, “I wonder what that means?”“Let’s get a taxi,” Marietta said.“No we have been sitting all day and we can easily pull these bags with wheels along behind us.”“We don’t know where we are going. The taxi will take us to the door.”“You have a map,” and so on it went until I relented and we took a taxi.We got to our hotel room at 7:00 P.M. opened the windows and the second metaphorical event happened, this time more to me than to Marietta.Our room had a view of one of the many piazzas in Florence. This one was called the Piazza Republico. When I flung open the windows to embrace our view, a bat came flying straight at my face then veered away just before it reached me. I was startled, “What does that mean?” I said out loud and then I showed Marietta the bat flittering about above the piazza.This reminds me of that ominous murder scene in Room with a View, Marietta said. “Maybe we are at some threshold of a rite of passage.”“But what are we supposed to learn from these two events,” I asked.“I don’t know,” Marietta replied. “Perhaps we will only know when we are home.”A bit unsettled I unpacked and showered. I began to wash my dirty clothes in the bathroom sink, as I had done everyday on our trip. Doing this gave me a respectable, righteous feeling. It made me feel safe that I had clothes to wear. It gave me a way to pass time that wasn’t walking and looking. I was glad for that.Marietta observed me washing clothes in the sink and asked, “Why are you washing clothes? That’s silly. When we get to Tuscany we will have access to a washer and dryer and it will be much easier.”“I have done this everyday. Are you just now having a problem with it?”“No, I just haven’t said anything about it. There is no point to it.”Marietta had discovered my secret defense of clothes washing and she was about to take it away from me. I needed routine. For that moment in this foreign place there was nothing that I knew I could hold on to but my routine of washing my clothes. And I wasn’t about to give up doing something that passed time safely that was not walking and looking and that gave me something to do to help me manage my fears. It was a responsible, reasonable, space saving, righteous thing to do. ‘How could I be criticized for doing this,’ I had thought. But surprise, even this had exposed my curmudgeon defenses.“I want to have all my clothes clean.” I responded lamely. “I want to have choices in what I wear.” I said reaching for an effective answer.It was clear that I had not found one when Marietta said, “You want to have a choice in underwear.”I didn’t answer. I was about finished anyway and I began laying out my wet clothes to dry.“Don’t put the clothes on the red velvet couch . . . Don’t put them on the leather straps.” She was referring to the leather straps on the fold out baggage stand. “Don’t put that wet shirt on the bed. Oh here.” And with that she replaced all the clothes I had just laid out on places more suitable to her. “Hurry and get ready. We have dinner reservations and I don’t want to miss them.”These were usually my cross words that I say to Marietta while I wait for her to finish poking her eyes, pulling at her hair and then blowing it dry. I never understood that whole woman-getting-ready thing. I can’t tell much difference from the before and the after. She always looks good to me.But here the shoe was on the other foot. Marietta rarely bickers. I do often. I wondered why to myself.  Is Marietta picking a fight with me? I also answered myself to myself, yes she is, but I dared not to ask her why.The reason was that we are both nervous about how we would manage the rest of our trip. We were both pleased that we had negotiated the train trip, but that was behind us. Now what were we going to do in the walking and looking capital of the world? Florence?  How would my back hold up? How will Marietta entertain me without Isabelle, Christian, Charlotte and Thomas? These were questions that we didn’t have the answer to. We had passed the test of the trip’s first leg.  We were both afraid of failing the test of the Florence part of the trip.A footnote to washing your own clothes on a trip. Be sure to rinse them very well. I didn’t. And I know what it feels like to be stuck in a car (with packed bags in the trunk) with soap next to the skin, in the crotch and in the armpits.If this happens to you be sure to have A&D ointment. On this trip it healed blisters and soap burns very well. Lessons Learned:

1. Prepare for your trip by reading books written by foreign authors from the country or region that you will visit. Watch movies from or about that country or movies about the country or region’s history.
2. Discover metaphors for your trip in things that you see. You can take this in whatever spirit you choose. On any level it can open you to the awe and wonder of your journey.
3. Remember turbulence at the boundary. After crossing a boundary it takes a while to settle into a new comfort zone.
4. Establish for yourself a daily routine. It can be a grooming ritual or washing clothes or a morning discussion about plans for the day. Whatever ritual you choose will create a feeling of familiarity and remind you that though you have no control over this world you have some control over yourself.
5. If you hand wash your clothes, be sure to rinse thoroughly.

Chapter Eight: Lemmings and MuseumsWe went to museums in Italy and France. For me the experience of going to a museum is fairly noxious and I find little difference between my experience of one museum or another. They all involve walking and looking. This bores me and hurts my back. Even though chronologically we are in Italy on our trip, here I will write about my collective experience of visiting the Orsay Museum in Paris and the Uffizzi in Florence.Museums seem to be the same every where; whether it is the Smithsonian that celebrates the scientific and technological prowess of the U.S. or whether it is the Orsay that celebrates France’s leadership in culture and modern art or whether it is the Uffizzi that proudly announces Florence as the birthplace of Truth and light’s victory over prejudice and despotism.People are herded through these places at the rate of thousands a day. We estimated that as much as twenty million dollars a year could come from ticket sales to the Uffizzi Museum and that excludes bequests, money made at the gift shop, and the right to license the images that the museum contains.In them people often carry guide books and stroll through the various rooms standing in front reading and reflecting on the painting or statue. In Paris, people walked about carrying black boxes a bit bigger than police 2-way radio. When they walked in front of an exhibit the lecture associated with the exhibit somehow begins. If you walk back to an exhibit you can start the lecture over again.Then there were those who gathered around someone holding up a plastic flower, or a hand covered with a red glove, or an umbrella or a stick with a tassel. I’m sure there are as many symbols to raise as there are guides who lead groups of tourists through these places. Wandering among hundreds of these groups we recognized Asian languages, French, English, German and Italian. Cameras were clicking and flashing all around, even though flashes were often forbidden, because the light from the flash might fade the colors in the painting.I was fortunate enough to have the best of all these. I had Marietta accompanying me through the mazes of rooms reading to me from the guidebook. From the French Museum, the Orsay I got that you could not have had Monet without Manet coming first, even if Manet’s art was sort of an adolescent rebellion, biting the hand of the French aristocracy of which he was part and whom he depended on to commission and purchase his art. Perhaps Manet was another confirmed curmudgeon like me, my father and Christian.Monet and his buddies got my attention for a moment. I like French impressionists because the pictures are a collaboration of color, form and the viewer’s imagination. For the picture to make sense the viewer must bring the elements together in his/her mind in order for them to look like anything. For me that’s an interesting exercise, at least when you are doing the looking part of walking and looking your eyes and mind have something challenging to do, putting together impressions into an image.The Florence Museums were filled with Madonnas. Everywhere you turned there was the Virgin Mary. Most of the religious scenes were either Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint or a pope surrounded by Courtiers. This contrasted with nudes, nudes of David, Adam and Eve or just nudes. There were equally as many nudes as there were religious works. These nobles who commissioned these nudes must have needed some help with sexual arousal because these pictures and statues looked a lot like what we call pornography. Donatalo’s David was clearly meant to be homosexual erotic art.As one might imagine the art was wasted on me. For someone like me to enjoy it I would have needed to have known something about what it meant to put a paint filled brush on a canvas. While I know about a zone defense, a drop back or roll out pass and how to play the break on a downhill putt, I know nothing of what it feels like to put chisel to marble. I only abstractly get it when they talk about using light or shade or shifting color palates. These things created important revolutions in art. I’m not sure how many of my fellow Arkadelphia, Arkansas good ole boys would be able to grasp the shift in Madonna paintings that happened when Michelangelo did his. For me to get much out of this I would need to take an art history course. I sort of got into Manet telling the cultural elite of his day to get a life, but only barely.What I did enjoy was watching the people; the weird people with the serious pretentious look on their faces holding a black box lecturing to them; the various shifts in melody that occurred when I walked from one guide lecturing in Italian to another lecturing in French to another lecturing in Japanese.I was impressed with how the art of the French and Italian was represented by the casual sexual dress of their people today. The French women seemed to me to be advertising their chests with body fitting, cleavage showing, and spandex blouses. I just thought that it was the dirty old man in me until Marietta commented on it. “Look at that girl,” she said. “She has the word ‘Beauty’ printed on her boobs. Did you see that?”“No,” I said. “I didn’t notice.”“Oh yeah sure,” Marietta said.In Italy the blouses were every bit as tight and so were the skirts. Here women seemed to be proud of their fronts and rears. Again I was to get confirmation of that from Marietta. “She’s not wearing any panties,” Marietta blurted out.“How do you know?” I asked.“Well if you are wearing something that tight you would see panty lines. Can you see?”“No, all I know was that there is no evidence of any lines there.” Images of oranges, cantaloupes moving in synchrony with each other filled my head. Sexual awareness seemed to be provoked all about me. The Italian men seemed to value moving female flesh of all shapes and sizes. Here women so clear about their femininity had a confidence and courage rare in the U.S.  Yes there were sexual messages being sent, but not to anyone in particular and not to everyone either. One could get a clear sense of the power and passion that was available when it was aimed at one target, received and requited.I could only wonder, coming from a more puritanical world, if a thirteen-year-old was able to manage such power as all this.Lessons Learned:

1. Make a battle plan to go to a museum. Read the museum guidebook to see what’s there and where it is in the museum. Plan your order of attack.
2. Decide how much time you want to spend in the museum. Two hours may be the maximum.
3. It would help if you read something about the subject of the museum and what is displayed there before you go. If it is art, read art history. If it is World War II read about World War II. Having some advance knowledge will make your museum visit more meaningful. (Marietta wrote this)
4. Avoid lines. Go when people are not likely to be there. This can be off-season, off days, such an non week-end days, or off. The Uffuzzi is open until 9:00 PM. After 5:00 PM there are no lines and the museum is relatively uncrowded. You can sprint down the halls then if you like and if you don’t get arrested.
5. People watch. That can be more interesting than the displays.*

 *Isabelle commented on this list of lessons learned: “David did you realize that from the purpose of museums which pretends to be the major issue in the chapter, you switched to another style of museum which attracts you quite more: the human animated and sexy world all around. This second style of museum is a kind of art, which captures your interest quiet more. I am sure Marietta was also very much interested in this second standard of museums.If they are like you David, they will feel guilty when they enjoy looking at sexy people. Reassure your readers that in France and Italy it is O.K. to go to museums or wander the streets just to look at sexy people. In Paris as soon as the temperature raises the 20 degrees 70° Fahrenheit with the sun shining, the atmosphere of the city changes immediately. You see lovers kissing each other everywhere, and everybody is staring at any attractive boy or girl, man or woman. Happy mood, fantasying and “légèreté” show up in everyone’s mind. And that must be still more emphasized as you go more south. I can imagine the shock you had in Italy.”Chapter Nine: Dining in FlorenceIn Florence there were even more places to eat outside than there were in Paris, though the menus were not as elaborate. Prosciutto and melon were always one of the choices for the first course. Often the waiter would sell rabbit and pasta as “delicioso.” In Italy, the house red wine, a table Chianti, was not as good as the house red wines in Paris, but if you ordered one of the reds that were one notch up from the table wine that was given the designation of Chianta Classico, it was excellent.We heard dining prices were lower in Firenze than they were in Paris. That wasn’t really true. The only thing that might be called reasonable was the wine prices.In Florence it was hard to get away from the tourists. Our first restaurant, Paoli, was filled with Americans. I bit on the sale of the rabbit, but clearly those who knew better had the thinly sliced smoked swordfish. That was what we wanted but we left the Italian phrase book and dictionary in the room and Marietta’s Italian hadn’t pushed the French from her brain yet so we were a bit lost. “Conto” she remembered the next day was the word for check.We rediscovered the world stereotype of nationalities in the restaurant. The British seemed pompous and loud constantly talking about money and the difficult rates of exchange. “They should just take off three zeroes” one Brit at the next table repeated five times “Yes, why don’t they” as his constant answer to his table companion.The Germans we saw were loud and obnoxious, making silly jokes. One looked at a window near the ceiling in a tower and called loudly “Rapunzul let down your hair,” in German. Marietta understood this because she is fluent in German.The Americans were ugly. They wore T-shirts with Panama City Beach on the front or baseball caps with the New York Yankee logo, with bermuda shorts and running shoes. Or others would dress in elegant, obviously expensive casual clothes and order the most expensive wine and swagger through the Piazza’s back to their hotels.Marietta and I split the difference.  I wore a Ben Hogan style golf hat, bermuda shorts and running shoes. Marietta turned herself out in nice looking sandals and a dress. When we went to dinner we were dressed a notch up from that, but we didn’t order the most expensive wine. Yes I probably did swagger across the Piazza back to the hotel after dinner eating my gelato.Marietta didn’t assume that the waiter could speak English, though I would have. She often carried on the whole dialogue with the waiter in Italian. She was rightly proud of that.On the way home that first night out I could feel something very familiar about the tension between us. “I’m tired Marietta. It’s 11:30 P.M.  We’ve been traveling all day and that wine really got to me.”“I’m coming,” she moaned, holding steady in front of a window staring at something she could do without.“I know what this is,” I said as she continued standing there stubbornly ignoring me. “You are as tired as I am. You are going to resist me just to prove you can. And then allow me to drag you back to the hotel because you know that’s where you need to go.”“I don’t have to come when you say come, or jump because you say jump,” she responded.“When you say come to Italy and come with a good attitude, I jumped. I’m too tired to jump your bones if that’s what you are worried about.”“My bones wouldn’t begin to rattle no matter how much you jumped,” Marietta said. “I guess I appreciate you good attitude so far. I should reward that, not create our usual going home spat.”Lessons Learned:

1. When you make dinner plans it is acceptable to consult guidebooks, but if a place is in a guidebook tourists will likely be the primary customer base. In Italy the food is good anywhere. If you want to eat where locals eat, talk to a barber or manicurist and ask them for advice. Be sure you tell them the kind of restaurant you are looking for.
2. State your limits clearly. Before you have had enough warn your partner, “I’m close to being ready to leave.” Try to avoid commands or ultimatums.
3. Listen for when your partner has run out of gas. A hungry tired or ignored partner can become a bear to be with.
4. Romantic expectations can become a problem. Talk together and plan to protect time to be physically intimate. If you don’t you might become exhausted from all the coming and going, wine and food and not have any energy left for that part of your relationship.

Chapter Ten: The Last Day in Florence

It’s our fourth day in Florence. We have been to the Duomo, climbed the tower and visited the Ufuzzi. “David let’s walk to Fort Bellevedeere. The guide books say the view of Florence from there is spectacular.”“I’m tired of walking and looking. I’ve done that for three days. My back is about out.”“I know David,” Marietta said, “and you have been very patient the last three days.”“Does going to Fort Bellevedeere mean we are walking from here to there, no loitering or lollygagging around? It says it is three miles there and I can do that, but my back can’t take it, if you have to say, ‘Oh David, stop, look at this’ and then five steps later, ‘Oh David look at this.’ I will go there if we can just go there. Are you willing to limit your ‘I-just-got-to-see-this’ stops to a minimum.”“Yes, David. I promise. The only stop we have to make is to get a sandwich for a little picnic once we get to the top of Fort Bellevedeere.”“O.K. I’m game.”So off we went. At Ponte Vecchio we got two panne, which as I understand it is Italian bread, prosciutto and parmesan cheese. We also got yogurt and some bottled water. Our picnic basket was a plastic grocery sack, which I carried until the sack handles, wore lines in my fingers. Then Marietta took her turn until her fingers had enough. As we kept exchanging the sack the streets became narrower and the incline steeper. As we neared the apex of a hill we saw the entrance to a stone wall that circled the top of the hill we had been climbing. We walked through the gate and then through a medieval passage. The stone pavement was well worn by the iron rims of carriage wheels or cannon carriers.As we emerged from the shadowy passage into the light Marietta began her Ohing and Awing. “Here we are at Fort Bellevedeere. Isn’t this magnificent?” she said.“Oh the tower view was prettier,” I said."Oh David, that’s not so,” she replied. “Look we don’t have to wait in line. There are only a few people here. We have the place more or less to ourselves. You can see Florence and the countryside. You’ve got to admit that this is pretty special.”“Yes it is another pretty place. I’m hungry lets eat.” I looked around behind the main building and found a picnic table under a pine tree.We settled at the picnic table, ate our sandwiches and discovered the various Florence landmarks that we could recognize from there. Suddenly I felt very tired. “I’m going to lay on this pine straw here in the shade and take a nap.”“David don’t you want to walk around the perimeter of the fort and see what we can discover?”“No, I want to take a nap,” and I lied down under the pine tree and closed my eyes. My mind began to wander. My thoughts began with the pine tree that sheltered me. This pine tree had very different cones than the loblolly pines in Tennessee.  They were tighter, smaller and firmer. This pine tree looks something like a hardy mountain pine. Then I began to feel the breeze wafting through what hair I have, down my shoulder and along my pant legs. I imagined thousands of butterflies had suddenly returned to this hill and their wings were bathing me with soft breezes. I imagined Marietta silently coming to lie beside me. I could barely distinguish her fingers from the butterflies. She was unzipping my pants very very slowly. She was preparing to be my Monica. Then I was startled by Marietta’s voice standing above me. “You have a smile on your face. What are you thinking about?”Marietta had returned from her exploratory walk.I kept my eyes closed and I told her about my vision.“Dream on,” she replied.Lessons Learned:

1. Naps are good, but if you are expecting amorous commerce it is better to take naps in a private place.
2. Sharing fantasies on trips can be fun, just be sure you know the difference between fantasy and reality.

Chapter Eleven: Journey in TuscanyIt was our last day in Florence and Marietta said, “we are going to leave this place where every night we were feted with fire-eating and concerts right out our window and we are going to some place back in the boonies where there are no stores and probably one restaurant.”“You passed the test,” I said.“What test?” she asked.“The Florence test and I guess I passed too because when we were coming here we dreaded it and now you are afraid to leave.”“How did you pass the test?” Marietta asked.“Well I did in your eyes or else you wouldn’t dread leaving here. I was part of here for you.”“I’m not sure that you are one of Florence’s assets, David, but I know how you passed the test.”“How?” I wondered.“You didn’t complain about the music in the square. Instead of keeping you up at night you said that it serenaded you to sleep and you kept the windows open. That’s passing the grouch test.”“Well the music was an improvement on your snoring.”“Well now you just flunked.”My cynicism was returning again as we approached another boundary. Marietta read me another portion of Under the Tuscan Sun. Here Frances (I think I can call her by her first name at this point) described a phone call from a stranger who was recently divorced looking to buy a home in a strange exotic place, as Frances did in Tuscany. “Are there any downside’s?” she asked Frances.“There’s no downside,” Marietta read.“That’s Bull- - - -”, I said with energy that even surprised me. “She’s just trying to raise the property value in Tuscany and she just did.”“Oh you are hrumphing again,” Marietta said. “Turbulence at the boundary.”“What do you mean?” I asked.“Well we are about to leave and you are becoming a curmudgeon again.”“And what about you?” I asked desperately looking for a flaw in Marietta that would somehow balance my most recent Achilles heel that Marietta had discovered.“I’m a bit worried. We have yet to find where the rental car is or to become competent drivers on the Autostrada (the Italian Interstate). And we have yet to know what to do with ourselves in the Tuscan countryside. We can’t go to France’s Mayes house Branasole, knock on the door and ask her and Ed to come out and play. I can’t be her sous chef and your back won’t let you plow the fields with Ed.“I feel like the female protagonist in the beginning of the movie Stealing Beauty (the other movie set in Italy that Marietta rented for us before we left). She was going somewhere for some reason, but she didn’t know exactly where or why.” (The where was to her biological father’s house. The why was to find out that he was her biological father and to begin her journey through life as a sexual woman, not with her father. It was another guy.)“Are you going to rediscover your virginity only to lose it again to an Italian lover?” I asked.“Maybe, I don’t know,” Marietta replied.A taxi took us to the Eurocar Rental place near the train station. This place was organized chaos. Somehow they rented us a car and got us out on the road with dispatch. But they had to do this in a 10 X 12 foot office with four people behind the counters, twenty people and their luggage in the room, and cars double-parked in front of the entrance to their garage so that no car could get in or out and police outside threatening to give a ticket to their returning patrons who were blocking traffic because we had no place to park.Once in our car and on the road the real contest began. Traffic in Italy is like two huge football games happening side by side. On one side the offense is driving one way and on the other side the offense is moving in the opposite direction. Your side of the road is an open field. There are white lines, but they have no meaning until the defense (the traffic lights) stop you at an intersection.Scooters and motorcycles have no rules and whiz about like honeybees going wherever they please. Automobiles are a bit more limited, but signaling to go from one lane to another is clearly ridiculous. Getting through this traffic is like maneuvering an open field run with a great many obstacles.We travel up to Fiesole, the Belle Meade of Florence. It seemed that no one lived in Florence. They worked there. The tourists stayed there, but the people lived on the other side of the Arno or in a suburb above Firenze, like Fiesole.When we arrived in Fiesole we were delighted to find a parking place. We sat in a café had a spumati and a sandwich. Marietta ordered a lemon spumati for me and orange for her. Spumanti is fresh squeezed juice. The waiter brought my, what I thought was, lemonade in a tall glass with ice, a pitcher of water, another glass of ice and four sugars. I drank my first drink of spumanti and tasted unadulterated ascorbic acid. I wanted my lemon to have more adultery than this.“Maybe that’s why they brought the pitcher of water and sugar,” Marietta said, as she laughed at my protesting puckered face.With that I began to mix water and sugar, lemon juice and ice trying to find something that was mildly palatable. After all four sugar packages and the whole pitcher of water I was able to continue drinking without my lips converging into a tight circle.We walked up to the San Francisco Chapel, just above the town square. There they were having a display of English photography. “The Twentieth Century, the English Century,” it was titled. On our way up to Fiesole we saw banners advertising the English Institute that demanded, “Speak only English.”This seemed so arrogant and the photo display seemed the same and very out of place in this place where Italy was so beautiful. Perhaps this beauty is taken for granted, just as native English-speaking people take for granted that they speak the world’s dominant language.We take our requisite view of Florence pictures from the San Francisco Chapel and then I announce, “I am ready to go.”“It’s just 1:30 and we aren’t supposed to be there until 4:00. ‘Please arrive between 4:00-7:00 PM’ the brochure says,” as Marietta reads from it.“If we get there early we can go to the village and buy groceries.”“We don’t know how far the Village will be from Iesolona (the farm villa where we are staying. Agrotourismo is what the Italian government calls their attempt to turn farms into tourist attractions. Iesolona is one of those that our travel agent found for us.)“Well I want to go.” I insisted. Though I was fearful of what’s ahead, I wanted to face it. My first fear was of the well publicized, dreaded Autostrada. Once we were in the Autostrada traffic I was glad to see that lanes mean a little more when driving on this highway. “Italian drivers drive like they have just stolen their cars and are being chased by invisible police,” our Danish waitress in Fiesole had said when we asked her about driving in Italy. And she was right.I really got into it. I was glad to have a stick shift car to compensate for the feeble engine of my fiat. I kept up with the traffic, that in the right lane was going 130 km per hour and in the left sometimes more than 150 km per hour. My guess was that this was between 75 and 90 mph. However fast it was felt like being a race car driver in a grand prix race.  The muscle cars here were BMW’s or Mercedes. They dominated the passing lanes and yielded only to more maneuverable BMW motorcycles that whizzed about sometimes right on the white lines passing between cars. I could now understand why European cars had to be so tight and responsive because driving here required intense concentration. You and your car had to move precisely. It was an adrenaline rush to be on the Autostrada, but not one I was ready for. When we moved toward the Autostrada entry point, a machine clicked.  A machine gate opened, stuck out its tongue at us until I figured out that its tongue was a ticket. I pushed my money clip beside my right leg, grabbed the ticket, handed it to Marietta and I was off. I kept my place in the great race. I figured out the signage and exited the Autostrada at the appropriate place. Where is the ticket?” I asked Marietta as the woman in the toll both taking tickets and money loomed ahead.“I don’t know.”“What do you mean you don’t know. I gave it to you. You were the keeper of the ticket,” I said with no humor.“Don’t be so anxious. We can pull off and find it.”“Pull off! Where? There is no place to pull off. Cars are behind us. Find that ticket.” I said pounding on my fists on the steering wheel, new behavior for me. Suddenly the tollbooth had turned me into a gesticulating angry Italian.“Stop being so anxious. That doesn’t help,” Marietta said.“You don’t tell an anxious man not to be anxious. I’m a psychologist. I know. And that doesn’t work.”“Here it is,” she produces the ticket as we are now two cars before the booth.I reached in my pocket for the money and it is not there.“Oh, no, I gave you the money when I gave you the ticket,” I falsely accused her.“I have some more money. Here I have 10,000 Lira. Surely it can’t be more than that,” Marietta said as we see a sign at the toll booth flash 13,000 Lira for the car in front of us.“Oh God it could be more,” I said and pointed to the sign. Marietta began fumbling for more money and I handed the ticket to the toll booth woman with our one bill.She took my 10,000 Lira bill and handed me back three 1,000 Lira bills. We were both ecstatic with relief.“Oh here is my money,” I said as I discover it falling as I’m turning on to the local road.“I stand falsely accused,” Marietta said.“Yes, this time,” I answered. Lessons Learned:

1. Be careful when driving in foreign countries. Know which side of the road to drive on. Know whether the speed limit exists or is enforced. Be sure not to drive too slow in Europe. Know what your car can and cannot do. Usually rental cars don’t have much zip.
2. Again, a reminder turbulence at boundaries.
3. Be prepared for the unexpected when you order at restaurants.
4. Know where your money is at all times. Have a plan to keep up with toll tickets.
5. Be careful with your accusations. They can backfire on you.
6. Be magnanimous when falsely accused. It will pay off for you when it is your turn to make that mistake.

Chapter Twelve: Arrival in Iesolona

We followed the brochure directions to our destination with only a few wrong turns. We passed under a roman bridge that was still used by trains. It loomed some 200 feet above us and had 16 arches. As we began to find signs with Iesolona written on them, we neared a small brick bridge that was maybe eight feet wide. It was the only way across a river that we were required to cross. An old man with a cane sat in a molded plastic chair at the entrance to the bridge. I mistook him for a gatekeeper. I held out money and he gruffly waved me on. I felt stupid and ashamed as I slowly moved onto the bridge that seemed to angle straight up. When I got to the bridge apex it felt as if it went straight back down. With the brick walls only inches from our car’s doors I was trying to keep the car heading straight as the round stones in the bridge’s pavement pushed the car’s tires this way and that.This felt like an important and dangerous threshold. When we reached the other side, we traveled another 2.4 kilometers further on a dirt road until we came upon two newly built terra cotta style imitation farmhouses. One of them was the home of the concierge. The other building contained five apartments. One of them was ours. We were nonplused until we got out of our car and looked around.While Florence had statues and paintings, Tuscany’s statues were its vistas of rolling hills clothed in olive groves, grape vineyards or forests. This created the same sensuous feel of the nude statues in the Ufuzzi, except here you were mostly alone with these beautiful views. The quiet here was startling, interrupted only by the buzz of honeybees.At night we would see the lights of villages surrounding us. Bucci, the adjacent small village, was southwest of us. Arrezzo, the nearest large hill town, was further away, directly south.It was 3:45 when we arrived. We looked around unsure of what we were seeing. We found the swimming pool. Marietta said, “This could have been the set to Stealing Beauty except this is more beautiful.”On cue at 4:00 the innkeeper emerged. With his good English and Marietta’s passable Italian we got settled in our two rooms, each room with one window looking East. Not much light came inside. The reason for that was obvious to us. When the sun shown in this beautiful land one would not want to be inside, rather here you would rather be outside under one of the four sheltered patios.“If I got to do nothing,” Marietta said, “this is a great place to do it.”But Marietta cannot sit still for long. We hadn’t been unpacked in Iesolona for more than one hour before she said, “Lets go for a walk.” So off we went down a dirt road west of our abode.We passed a curiously plowed field. The dirt clods that the plow unfolded from the earth were huge. Most were easily one foot in diameter. Marietta walked into an adjacent grape field and brought us back a cluster of sweet red grapes.We soon came upon an old abandoned house down near a dry streambed. It was more than one old house. It was once a farm compound with three decayed old buildings. One might have been a stable. It was hard to tell because they were in such disrepair. “Oh God,” I prayed silently, “please don’t let Marietta want to buy this house.”Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Ed (her husband, significant other or lover or fellow tender of Bramasole), had become our idols. I read that Ed had a favorite men’s store, Bussati, in Arezzo and I wanted to go there because I know if Ed would like it I would too. On page 176 Frances hints that Ed might be a curmudgeon too. She says, “As we leave, I see a sign to an Etruscan site, but Ed presses the accelerator; he’s tombed out.”Can I identify with that!!We miss Christian and Isabelle and in my mind I am putting Frances and her family in their place. France’s daughter, Ashley, and her boyfriend Jess, of whom Frances said, “If I’d had a boy I’d have wanted him to be like Jess.” No pressure mind you, Ashley. But if Ashley wanted him I’m sure Ashley, Bramsole, Ed and mom could charm him.  I’m sure if he read Under the Tuscan Sun that by now he knows that they all come together as a package deal.But I digress. (I can’t resist being a psychologist.) We were talking about the deserted house. Marietta walked inside, “low ceilings,” she said and I knew I was safe. After passing the house about 100 yards away, we found a deer stand. Many people might not know what that is, but every good old boy from the South knows what a deer stand is. And this was a good one. A deerstand is a small tree house, made of anything, a place to hide-in-wait for the deer to walk past. This one was about eight feet up in the tree. Its dimensions were 4x4x6. It was made of tin and painted green for camouflage.Of course green wouldn’t work in the states because deer season is in the fall and the leaves aren’t green then, but here we found out upon our return, deer season is in September. Trees were still green (which meant it was deer season while we are walking. Luckily no hunters were present).The deer stand was in a clearing just before the road entered a wood. We followed the road into the forest. The forest seemed to swallow the road. Once under the trees the sun left and the flies suddenly descended on us. Marietta said, “This wood is so dark that I feel we are Hansel and Gretel, but Mother Goose never mentioned flies.” The trees in the forest were not the tall pine and oak we are used to in Tennessee. They are small sturdy stock that produced a tight canopy that kept out light and kept down the undergrowth. The ground under the trees was bare and dry this time of year.We walked on silently except for our cursing the flies and our slapping hands and the buzzing of the flies and whatever else was in the swarm of things flying about.Suddenly Marietta stopped and whispered, “David did you see that?”“No, I can only see the fly that’s about to bite me on front of my nose.”“It was a deer,” Marietta said.I looked and saw a smallish something just a bit bigger than a large dog cross the road fifty-feet in front of us. We stopped still and then came another and another it was a whole herd of something. More than ten crossed in front of us just then.The deer I’m used to are about as tall as I am and can jump five-foot fences without pausing. “They must be goats,” I said until one ran just in front of us. “No, that’s no goat. It has mule ears and the body of a deer, but it is just about the size of a Great Dane. That must be Italy’s version of a deer,” I said. Then a herd of over forty deer crossed the road in front of us, while we stared silently at their magical passing.We walked along about a half-mile further and we saw a pheasant, one, then several, certainly more than ten. Further down the road we saw more pheasants. They only seemed barely afraid of us. Both they and we didn’t know that pheasant season began in October, one month away.We were about to turn around but we saw light coming from an opening in the wood. The road led out of the wood up the hill to a house. There was a car parked in the yard of the house. It looked like a rental cottage in the woods. And up to the left of the house was a very large villa on the hill dominating the whole area. We had clearly walked a very long way because you can see these houses far away in the distance from the window of our apartment.Marietta had to go walk around the house intruding on someone’s space while I stamped my foot and shouted in a whisper, “Marietta don’t,” embarrassed, not wanting to trespass, feeling responsible, wanting to crawl under a rock, hoping that I don’t have to fight for her honor. She doesn’t listen to me. But she does shortly return. “This house reminds me of Hansel and Gretel’s fathers house, the woodcutters house, next to the woods,” she said.And we proceed back the way we came. We were about half way into the wood when something fierce swarms at me. Bugs seem to love me. I have always been Marietta’s bug protector. Wherever we go together the bugs find me so delicious that they chew on me and leave her untouched. But this was not your ordinary deer fly or mosquito. And it landed on my hand. I shook it off but it came again with a vengeance at my middle finger. It stung me. Oh how it stung me. I yelled at Marietta, “Run! We’re into a nest of something,” and I took off.Marietta just stood there watching me as if I had suddenly gone crazy and I am shaking my hand, yelling and running off.I ran and I ran hard. I’m allergic to bee and wasp stings and this felt worse than those. My mind raced to the time I was a boy and I found a wasp nest. William Lee told me to “hit the nest and stand real still and the wasps wouldn’t know what to go after. It was only when you run that they see movement that they will attack,” he said.So my ten-year-old eyes focused on that wasp nest.  I did this once. I swatted at the nest with a broom and stood still and sure enough wasps didn’t sting me, but I didn’t knock the nest down either. I swatted at the nest again. And then stood still. A couple of wasps looked at me real close, but I didn’t get stung. I still hadn’t knocked the nest down with my swats, so I waited ‘til the wasps settled again on their nest and I swatted at them again. This time I got it and this time the wasps figured it out. I stood real still and they came right at me.As I was running in this forest in Italy I remembered how badly this had hurt and I realized that pain I felt then was returning to my middle finger now. As I ran I sucked on my finger hoping to suck the stinger out. I remembered my mother putting tea leaves on my wasp stings and my father putting a raw steak over one of them. I remembered visiting Aunt Jane for two weeks in the summer when I was eleven. In the first week I got stung by a wasp and I wasn’t even after its nest. I recovered and then got stung again the second week and that second time I ran to Aunt Jane yelling, moaning at God, and the world, “Oh no, Aunt Jane, not again.” Yes again and in Italy, no momma, daddy, no Aunt Jane, only a wife who walks, now one mile behind me thinking I’m crazy.But one good thing about this was that France’s Ed was allergic to bee stings too. I just knew he would understand.When Marietta finally returned to our apartment she was not sure how to take this. Though she didn’t say it out loud I could tell she wondered if this was more of my backache secondary gain that she considered hypochondriacal. That night we tended to my injury. I soaked my sting in tealeaves, took Benadryl and drank wine until I fell asleep.  I awoke late the next morning hung over and with a hand the size of a small baseball mitt.By this time Marietta was concerned. She ferried me into the Pharmacia in Bucini. The pharmacist looked at it and began her diagnostic inquiry: “It happen soon?”“No it happened last night at 8:00 or so.”“Oh nothing can do. If you come here soon maybe something. You go to doctor in Monte Falco, to hospital. Dangeroso. Yes, I think, could be dangeroso.”Well “dangeroso” got our attention. She could see that we thought that doctors and hospitals were a bit overkill for a wasp sting, so she said, “here take one of these now and one at night. If not better go to hospital, see doctor.” And she hands me a small box of cortisone pills.I took the first pill right there. We paid her 17,000 Lira, thanked her and returned to the car. We got in and drove off. On the way back I said. “Oh boy, come to Italy to be stung by a hornet. That’s what I want to do. Come here, my allergic body has a toxic reaction and I die, right here in Iesolona.”“Oh stop it,” Marietta said. “The swelling is confined to your hand. If it keeps on swelling during the day and this medicine doesn’t help I will take you to the hospital.”“So I can die in an Italian hospital.”The two cortisone pills and a good night sleep return my hand to normal.A health care delivery system that uses the pharmacist as the first level triage seemed to us a sensible way to get cheap, effective, medical treatment. Let the Pharmacie sell the medication you might need. If that didn’t work, go see the doctor the next day. The pills cost about four dollars.Giovanni, our innkeeper, told us the next day that Iesolona was known for being a good place to hunt. “You can kill two deer a season he said, no sexual preference. And there is pheasant hunting in October and wild boar then too.”If I were a hunter this would be a great way to visit Italy. I would take a bottle of scotch; go sit in the deer stand and Marietta could go walking and looking. But I can’t kill Bambi and I don’t like being drunk. So that’s out.

 Lessons Learned:

1. Be sure you have good directions to your destination.
2. It is important not to arrive before your host is ready for you.
3. Explore the world closet to your domicile first. The world just outside your door may be more fascinating than a museum.
4. Keep an eye out for strange flora and fauna. It is fun to discover new plants and animals.
5. Bring a first-aid kit along. If you are allergic to insect stings or bites carry an antidote with you.
6. Remember when you need help or are seriously hurt, ask for help. People everywhere enjoy helping you recover from a tragedy.

 Chapter Thirteen: Churches in Italy

In Florence there were churches, but the line for the Duomo was too long for even Marietta. In Arezzo and Sienna, Churches were the main attractions and there were no lines. In Arezzo, Piero della Francesa (1410-92) painted the Madonna again, but this Madonna changed art. Francesa discovered perspective. I was real happy about that.  It had something to do with math science and proportion. It obviously didn’t all come together for me.The Duomo in Siena was a bit like visiting Notre Dame. The objects d’art here were the frescos on the floor, amazing marble renderings of Biblical blood and guts.Churches were a great compromise for Marietta and me because they either had pews or curmudgeon chairs that were scattered about that allowed the visitor to sit and contemplate the art. These chairs were mostly inhabited by men with bored looks on their faces or older women who were looking intently at the art seeing something I could not begin to see. Or perhaps these women were tired too and were faking it, not wanting to betray their gender.Many churches, like the Duomo in Siena, could barely be called churches because they functioned more like a museum than a church. They were filled with tourists not worshipers. In Arrezzo the San Francesa Church was their big church and inside tourists were doing their walking and looking thing, but off to the side the priest was conducting vespers. I was drawn to that. I sat in a nearby pew where I could observe. These folks really knew what they were doing. They had no bulletin, no hymnal. They knew when to stand and chant and when to sit and listen to the priest. And when they stood to chant they knew what to say.When the service was over, twenty-two people came out. Of that twenty-two, four were men. One of those men came late to escort his feeble mother home and one was the priest. It appeared to me that a great many Italian men might be curmudgeons too, at least curmudgeons when it came to daily vespers.We went into one church in Arrezzo and we were the only ones there. The priest was leaving the sanctuary as we came in. Flowers were about the alter and rice was littered in front of the church. We imagined that a wedding had recently occurred.I walked in, looked about for a bit and was drawn to a pew. My mood became serious and I knelt down on both knees and began to pray.This summer had been a particularly difficult one. Since my parents died I have been responsible for the care of my sister, Betsy, who was born with Down’s syndrome. Betsy had back surgery in May and lived with us while she recovered. Marietta shouldered a great deal of Betsy’s care. She deserved to have a decent vacation and somehow I was overcome with the urge to pray that I could somehow contribute to her having an experience she would remember with pleasure. I wanted to pray that God would help us on our quest in Italy, protect us from harm and show us the way on our quest.Both knees had just hit the kneeling boards when Marietta plopped down beside me on the pew. “You’ve got to come look at this.”“I don’t want to. I’m trying to pray.”“Oh come on.”“No get away from me. Leave me alone. I want to see if this place can move me.” I knew that was a tall order even for this medieval Cathedral.As Marietta and I talked, an older Italian woman came into the Vestabule and began to sweep. She looked up at us causing all this commotion and shook her head and went back to her work. I’m sure I heard the words “stupido turistico” coming from her mouth, but her lips didn’t move.Marietta finally left me alone and I got back to praying. I had found an assignment. I was not interested in walking and looking in these churches, but God knows I need to pray. So as we would go from church to church I would set my protestant bones in a pew or a chair and I would try to pray. As soon as Marietta figured out that I truly was trying to pray, she left me to my task and when she was finished walking and looking she would come get me. In one church I even lit candles for my father. I figured my mentor at hrumphing probably needed help in getting out of purgatory just like I would someday. I lit one for my mother to make her smile and two for Marietta’s parents and two for Marietta’s Aunt and Uncle. This set me back six thousand lira or less than three dollars. Oh, I don’t believe you can buy off God, certainly not for three bucks, but according to Pascal what do you have to lose? It was a good bet.Lessons Learned:

1. When you go to places that interest your partner look for ways to discover something that interests you as well. Almost always if someone gets wisdom and instruction that meets his/her needs, there is usually something in the source of wisdom that will serve you as well. So if your partner quotes the Bible to you, read the Bible and you will find something in it that you can quote back. If your partner wants to go to Churches or museums, go. Since you are there, look for what interests you also.
2. The cultural artifacts that you see might not interest you, but usually the people, especially the natives, will be of interest. As a marginal observer take advantage of this position and you will surely see fascinating behavior.
3. Be aware that in a foreign country you are the one most likely to be out of place or out of step, “stupido turistico.” Think of how funny and silly you must appear to the local people and laugh with them.

Chapter Fourteen: The Pilgrimage to Cortona

In one church Marietta picked up a discarded bulletin from a Sunday service that had some Italian pencil scribbling on it. These Italian words appeared to be someone’s notes from the Sunday Service. “Siamo Pellegrini” was about all that we could make out. Translated by Marietta it means, “we are all pilgrims.”We came here because of the book Under the Tuscan Sun. Marietta read it and she had to go to Italy. It seemed like just another travel fad to me, but to prepare for this trip I read it too. I not only read it, I studied it. Frances’ sentiments about the tourist life were similar to mine.Seven countries is three weeks. . . its extremely interesting when one chooses to power through that many miles. First of all, it’s very American. Just drive, please. Far and quickly. There’s a strong “get me out of here” impetus “so we can say been there. Done that.”Trips to Tuscany seemed a bit that way to me. Keeping up with the Jones next door. At a cocktail party we can now say, “Oh yes, we read Under the Tuscan Sun and we just had to go. It was a wonderful trip.”But this is clearly not what the book is attempting to inspire. Frances is on the north side of middle-age. Somewhere in the book she speaks of her mother and grandmother and vows that she is determined not to spend the second half of her life in bitterness like they did. As she pens Under the Tuscan Sun she is not too far out of a difficult divorce.The reader can’t help but see in the project of Bramasole the challenge she has taken to build a new life, to grab the freedom that is the outcome of healthy grieving and to do what she could not have done in her earlier life.We watch the story unfold; see the picture that her words draw for us of her 5'4" frame working with Ed’s 6'2". “He takes the ceiling. I take the floor,” she writes.  And off they go, investing money, time, blood and sweat in a small house and a five-acre piece of real estate in a foreign country. They transform their lives from teacher, poet, and writer, academic in the winter to farmer, builder, chef and neighbor in the summer. This is a book about risk, danger, the turns that Frances and Ed dared take were personal risks. Their intimate lives were at stake. What is fascinating to me is their personal story.Marietta and I too are just a bit past mid life. She is a judge. I am a psychologist. Both of us have, “made it” to where we had aspired to be at twenty. And we were both wondering: “now what?” This was the quest of this trip. Frances and Ed found their answer. That this was possible, that an answer to mid-life question could be found was exciting.“My idea of heaven is a two hour lunch with Ed,” Frances says (p120). Probably the best I could do with Marietta would be lunch with me for thirty minutes, if the food was her favorite, Tagliatale con Rosemare with Tiramasu for dessert.What is captivating for me about Under the Tuscan Sun or Bella Tuscany is not just Frances’ writing or her discovery of five interesting rainbows driving and arching around the dome of Santa Maria Nuova or her description of one of her wonderful evenings. “Now the night is big and quiet. No moon. We talk, talk, talk. Nothing to interrupt us except the shooting stars.” What fascinates me is her rebirth here in Tuscany.Today was the day we go to Cortona. We go to see the town and its churches. And that we do. We see the anorectic saint, Santa Marghretti; but we weren’t able to get close enough to see her “creepy feet” as Frances had been able to do.We ask where Bramasole (Frances’ house) is. Everyone seems to know. We get several sets of directions. At the Santa Marghretti’s Cathedral we sense we are close so we exit the gate. We come upon a man walking his dog. It is about 2:30 PM. “Oh yes, I know Bramasole. The American Literate? She lives just up the road straight ahead to the left then right.”As we contemplated our journey to Bramasole we saw a tall hapless looking tourist wandering about alone. His hair was a mess, his beard scraggly. He walked sadly bent over under the burden of some heavy grief.“That’s Frances’ ex-husband,” I conjectured. “He had to come see for himself what he could have had and missed. He had a woman with a strong enough feminine power to seduce Americans to come to Italy and then seduce Cortona into making her an honorary local citizen. He could have been Ed, here with an unbroken family with Frances and he blew it. Probably he had run away with a younger woman and wasn’t able to face the inevitable diminishing of his manhood. The new younger woman quickly tired of him and now he is wandering around searching for Bramasole to catch a glimpse of the life he lost.”“In your version of Frances’ divorce you made her the innocent victim,” Marietta said. “In mine she ran off with Ed, her lover, because her husband was lost in his work. Your version says more about you than it does about her husband.”“And yours tells me that you have a lover,” I replied.I think my version may be a bit closer to the truth. Frances words: “What I feared was that at the end of my marriage, life would narrow. A family history I suppose, of resigned disappointed ancestors, old belles of the country looking at the pressed roses in their world atlases. And, I think, for those of us who came of age with the women’s movement, there’s always the fear that it’s not real, you’re not really allowed to determine your own life. It will be pulled back at any moment. I’ve had the sensation of surfing the big comber and soon the spilling wave will curl over, sucking me under. But, slow learner, I’m beginning to trust that the gods are not going to snatch my firstborn if I happen to enjoy my life.” (P191).That question that Frances brought to Italy is the same one that I bring. Like Frances someone important to me died when I was fourteen. In her case it was her father. In my case it was my beloved eldest brother. Life for my parents and life for me was never the same after that. It was if the world was only a beach ball and we hadn’t known that. Suddenly when my brother died someone poked a hole in the world and all the air went out.My parent’s destiny changed for them at ages forty-seven and forty-nine and they never quite recovered their balance. Here I am looking at my life through my parents lives and their parents lives, seeing sadness and resignation everywhere I look. I think of the book Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst and I see that Frances and Ed did not resign.The confidence of my youthful virility is lost to me. Does this mean the rest of my life is a sentence to be served? This is my quest to answer that question: Is that all there is?I hope not. I hope that Marietta and I can accept the challenge of Frances and Ed. So off to Bramasole.We walk down a dirt road for more than one kilometer. Then we come to a tavern and we see a highway with several villas on either side. “One of those must be Bramasole,” I said. We walk and walk for over one hour along this road. “There’s a shrine to Mary,” Marietta squeals. “We must be near. David, stand by Mary and let me take your picture.” I did and she did and we walked to what had to be Bramasole. It was a mansion with several tiled terraces and statues. “After she wrote her book she had more money to add on to Bramasole,” I said.“David this can’t be it,” Marietta said. “Frances described her house as a small house. This is a mansion. And it is an old mansion. This is not a writer’s house.”A man and woman speaking Italian loudly to each other were walking toward us on the road.  Marietta asked, “Dové Bramasole?”They clearly knew. We were way beyond where it was. “Returno” (go back) a very long way, six kilometers.” We had passed the road to Bramasole when we reached the tavern the first time. When we reached it again we stopped for cokes and more directions. “200 meters ‘a gauche.” We go down another road much further than 200 meters.” We missed it again,” Marietta said. “I’m tired of this. It is usually you who is being dragged around resenting it. Now it’s me. And where did all this enthusiastic energy come from?”“From my quest,” I answered.But now after seven miles of walking, for it to be just 200 meters away and we still couldn’t find it, our pilgrimage to Bramasole seemed a bit silly.“There it is,” Marietta said, pointing to a small cottage below us accessed by a long driveway. As Diane Johnson, a reviewer of Under the Tuscan Sun, warned, “Frances Mayes may find us on her doorstep one day.” And here we were.“Yes, that must be it.” This was not an imposing villa. It was a small house with a terrace set on a hillside with terraced steps filled with olive trees.No one appeared to be home. And barging in on Frances and Ed was not how we wanted to meet these demigods. We took our pictures of what we guessed was the temple of our quest and began our trip back home, trying to remember one of the points of my first book, which was, the journey is more important than the destination.Lessons Learned:

1. Do something during your visit that you have passion for. If it is golf, go play golf. If it is fishing, go fishing. Put some activity in the trip that you really want to do.
2. Having heroes in your journey gives you a frame of reference and a source for dialogue and comparison. Perhaps your heroes can be movie characters or characters from history or literature or distant relatives that once lived in this land. Looking at the country through their eyes, as well as yours, can be very revealing.
3. Look at the people you see and make up fantasy stories about them, but don’t take these stories seriously.
4. Consider how the people who live in this land meet the crises of aging in their marriages, in their hearts. Compare their strategies with yours.

Chapter Fifteen: PassagiattaIt’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. The town seems relatively quiet and then the bells from the bell tower ring about 5:30 P.M. and people stream on to the town’s main street. Suddenly the street is full to the brim with people strolling. Teenagers find their friends. Proud parents stroll their baby for all to poke and smile.Conversations are animated. Shopkeepers stand at their door waving and talking to those that pass by. People seemed to be dressed up specifically to be seen. Girls looked their best, women their most elegant. Men had combed their hair. The dress naturally varied according to the person. There were women in dresses and men in coats and ties, but they were in the minority even of the adults. Kids dressed like kids and working people dressed like working people. But everyone was prepared for onlookers.And there were some of those too, onlookers, people who refused the invitation to promenade, who sat on steps or in outdoor cafes, sipping cappuccino or perhaps gin and tonic. The conversations seemed to cover all subjects, though they were only barely understood by Marietta.We saw the Passagietta’s of Florence, Cortona, Arrezzo, Sienna, Perugia, Pienza. Arrezzo’s Passagietta impressed me the most. When the bells rang the people really turned out in force.A teenage girl was walking with her mother and sister sobbing about some tragic end of the world event. I thought she would make an attempt at composing herself because of all the people around, but she didn’t. Neither her mother nor sister seemed embarrassed. Eventually her mother pointed to a clothing store window, perhaps distracting her with a bribe and her anguish ceased.Two men dressed in shirt sleeves and smoking cigarettes walked together with one man’s hand in his pants pocket and the other man’s arm woven into the empty space between his friend’s arm and torso. The man with his hand in his pocket seemed to be listening intently and the other man was talking excitedly.I was ecstatic watching this mass of people in this daily community ritual. Walking had no real destination. People simply walked from the gate up toward the town’s central Piazza and back for as many times as their conversations and people to see and be seen by, lasted.I saw a group of teenage boys in a circle with two boys in the middle clasping each other by the shoulders. There was a great deal of shouting that I didn’t understand and after one particularly loud exchange, a large strong male shopkeeper came out of his shop and stared at those boys with a concerned look on his face. I stopped because I thought a fight was about to erupt, but it didn’t.In the Piazza on the top step leading to the duomo stood a young man dressed in a bright red cotton warm-up suit, holding a Bible. He was shouting and gesticulating at the people who walked below as they ignored him. It reminded me of the story my father told me about my crazy cousin, Dougal. In 1932 my cousin Dougal was instructed in a visitation from God to go save the sinners in Hotsprings, the Las Vegas sin capital of Arkansas. Dougal stood on a stack of Coca-Cola cases amidst throngs of passers-by with his Bible, preaching and prophesying to the sinners and heathens. After hours of being ignored Dougal slammed his Bible shut and yelled, “Just go to Hell then,” and he went home.In Arezzo, I saw a man dressed in a banker’s suit walking arm in arm with his well-dressed wife. In front of them walked their Down’s syndrome adolescent son. They talked to each other and some to him. He clearly wanted to be independent of them and he tried to ignore them.I flashed back to my parents and my sister. My lawyer father, and his well-dressed wife. Mother gave Betsy, her own name, Elizabeth. She was called Betsy to avoid confusion. Naming Betsy after her was one of Mother’s many ways of trying to protect Betsy.Try as she might there was little protection that any of us could give Betsy. I remember one day I dropped Betsy off at her junior high school (what would today be called middle school). Betsy began her walk to the front doors down a long wide sidewalk, that school’s version of a piazza. Off to the left stood a group of girls. One of them pointed at Betsy and they all began to laugh. Betsy saw it too. She stiffened, walked on, doing her best to ignore them. Laughing at her with me, her big brother, watching, David McMillan, former quarterback of the football team, former president of the student body, and I had no way to protect her either.These parents walking behind their son on their daily passagiatta were trying to show the world that they stood behind their boy. They wanted to transfer to him whatever respect they could.  Yet this boy, like my sister Betsy, wanted to stand on his own, even if it meant he lost their protection. Betsy has done it for forty-seven years. This boy can do it too.This communal daily ritual seemed wonderful to me. There was healthy exercise. I reckoned they might walk a mile in this stroll. There is the constant public display of affection, the greeting kisses, the walking arm-in-arm, the display of emotion without embarrassment. But most wonderful was the communal nature of this daily parade, this announcement to themselves and each other, “hi this is me, and that’s you and look at all of us being we.”Lessons Learned:

1. When you discover a strange custom or ritual, imagine this custom being a part of your world at home. What purpose would it serve? How could this change your culture, what can you do in your life to serve the same value as this ritual?
2. Look at your parents and family through the lens of this new-to-you world. What do you learn about them and yourself? How are you the same and how are you different?
3. Take pictures of people – not just objects or statues. People are the most interesting images. There are better pictures on postcards of Michelangelo’s David or the Rose Window than you can take, but your pictures of real people living their daily lives are unique and interesting.

Chapter Sixteen: Marietta Had a Wreck“I want to drive,” Marietta said. “I miss driving my old stick shift Alfa. I’m going to drive myself to my manicure appointment. You can just stay here and enjoy the view. I shouldn’t be too long.”I read and studied Frances some more and wrote a bit. Marietta wasn’t much too late. She’s always late so it didn’t phase me that she was about thirty minutes late when she opened the door and announced, “I wrecked the car. On the way out of here I ran into a ditch and got stuck. This man in a truck came along and pulled me out. I was going a bit fast and I looked down to see what gear I was in and when I looked up I was in the ditch. I’m not hurt, just a bit shaken.”“You’re all right?”“Yes, I’m fine.”“Let me take a look at the car. Throw me the keys.” We walked out to the car with Marietta telling me the story again. “I gave the man 50,000 lira for pulling me out. Do you think that was too much?”When we got to the car only the rearview mirror glass on the driver’s side was broken and the left rear door panel a bit scratched and dented. The car drove fine.“We rented cars all over and this was the first time we had a wreck,” Marietta said. That was my hint. I was at an important choice point. I could prosecute and vilify Marietta and make myself the only competent one of the two of us or I could normalize this, as Marietta was trying to do, to help protect her from the sting of this mistake.“And we got to say you were driving because we didn’t pay the extra five dollars a day for me to be a driver.” That could have set me off, but we had already figured out that we were insured and that it was a no-fault version.  Basically no harm no foul. So I took the high road. Now I’m not always able to do this, but with my fear in check taking the high road was much easier.“It could have just as easily have been me.” I lied. “And I’m sure glad it wasn’t.” That part was the truth. “I would have been the ugly American tourist and you can play the role of damsel in distress better than I.”“Yes, I could. And I played it to the hilt this time, because I was.”“I’m glad you’re back safe and sound. Actually you helped us a bit. Now we can identify our rented Fiat in the parking lots.”We gathered our things for our last day trip in Tuscany. We were off to Perugia. “This has sure been a great trip,” Marietta said. “We’ve seen a lot. I’ve had a good time. Our next week we will probably spend most of it in our room, looking at the view.”If you believe that, I’ve got an original Michelangelo I want to sell you cheap for three million. This was Marietta’s announcement that she was apprehensive about the next leg of the trip and the grade she was giving me for this the Tuscan leg. Apparently I passed, I’m proud to say.We drove on to Perugia, the capitol of Umbria. I was surprised that Perugia wasn’t just another hill town. It was a major city, rivaling Florence in size. It was a center for education and commerce and it boasted the bloodiest, bawdiest, stupidest ruling family of the Renaissance. They tore out human hearts and ate them raw for lunch. They married their sisters. They killed each other in 1520 so that only a very few were left.The thing I will remember about Perugia was that this was the place where we ran into a shutdown Autostrada. Now that would test anyone’s fanatic positivism or military optimism. I don’t even think Frances and Ed like the propensity of the Autostrada to get blocked with wrecks.We got off before we got on and followed the native drivers around the back roads of Perugia until we came upon the Autostrada at another entry point. This time it was moving and we got on.There is a great feeling, when you are on a trip and you are lost and don’t know which way to go and suddenly, you find yourself. Marietta and I were quite proud that though we were often lost, we always found ourselves.I didn’t even mind stopping and asking for directions. The only part of this two-part task that I had to do was to stop. Marietta spoke some Italian so she was the one who did the asking. That’s the part I hate. For me the reason I hate to ask is because I hate to be empty. I hate the role of not knowing. I love the role of being full of information, of giving help. I feel so bad to be the one who needs help.Marietta thrives on the not knowing role. “Fill me up with information,” she shouts to the world. “I love the way I can open doors when I cock my head to the left and say, ‘Can you help me.’ And people respond. I feel so powerful that I can seduce them into helping me and I can make them feel so good at the same time.”No she would never admit this, but I know its true. What she doesn’t understand is that I have a difficult time finding an entry point for that role. Oh, I don’t know with the best of them. And I want to know so bad that I pretend I do or I make up some theory that will provide the answer. I don’t always have to be the one who knows. I’m glad for other people to know, but if no one knows I figure it out in no time or at least I have an answer until a better one comes along. If a better one comes that’s fine. What I can’t stand is the vacuum of having no answer.Clearly when you are traveling in a foreign country that you have never been to there are many times that you don’t know. Negotiating those times gracefully is important to the success of any trip.But I had passed this second leg of my test. Marietta said that she had a good time and that means I passed.“You said that after our trip to Europe thirteen years ago,” I reminded her.“I said what,” she inquired.“You said that you had a good time and only later did you tell me that it was awful.”“Well we did some things I enjoyed, but you were a drag.”“So, am I going to hear about what a drag I was on this trip?”“No,” she said. “I have really enjoyed you and the trip.”“I’m going to write this down and show it to your later.”“I know,” she said.The reason I think I did well on this part of the trip had to do more with Marietta’s wreck. From that event I got the high moral ground. She was the drag, the one making a mess. I am so glad that I let her off the hook. I think that that is the real reason I passed the test.Lessons Learned:

1. Don’t let mistakes and minor tragedies defeat your sense of humor.
2. If your partner makes a mistake and feels bad help them get over it. Encourage them, laugh and above all don’t be critical when the milk has spilled. Just help clean up and go on.
3. In a foreign country you are going to need help. You have to get over not wanting to ask for directions. You will need courage, tact and a little cash and a pretty leg doesn’t hurt.
4. Whatever you do avoid blame. Your trip is a story. You are both The ordeal of travel is the villain, but believe that together, you are up to the challenge.

Chapter Seventeen: The OmensToday was the day we had to turn in our banged up car. We drove through Fierenze streets to the Eurocar rental shop. After many wrong turns and enough right ones we found the place. We dropped off the car. We just gave them what was left of it. They didn’t even want to know who was driving. We schlepped our bags on foot to the train station. Bags with wheels, a great invention. Five blocks and no back strains or hand cramps.The ticket and information lines were so long that we couldn’t join the queue and make the next train to Pisa and then Monteroso, so we just got on the train like we did in Paris. We found a relatively empty car and commandeered four seats, two for our bags and two for our bodies. Marietta’s plan was to get on the train and play stupid, which was not difficult for us. We had a Eurorail pass for two.  We had overheard others saying that if we were without a bonafide train station ticket that we would be fined a small amount. We sat in our seats and read the whole way to Pisa and no one asked for our tickets.On the train to Monteroso we were discovered. The conductor looked at our Eurorail pass. “Where on the train did you get on?” he asked after he realized that his English was better than Marietta’s Italian.“Firenze,” was our answer.He asked, “Where you get off?”“Monteroso,” Marietta answered.He laughed. We weren’t sure at what. Perhaps it was that no one had checked our tickets until now. He handed us back our pass without writing the date on it. Which meant that we still had five days of free rail travel on our six-day Eurorail pass.As the kilometers click clacked beneath us, I asked Marietta, “What do you think the omens meant about our time in Tuscany?”“What are you talking about?”“Remember the woman who laid so still on her purse on the concrete train platform after she had an epileptic seizure. And remember the bat that flew toward me when I opened the hotel window.”“Yes I do . . . I don’t know,” was her answer. “What omens did we have on our last trip to Europe fourteen years ago? Oh I remember . . . the hurricane. When we got back from Europe we stayed for a few days in Massachusetts where you were the best man in Steve Prasinos’ wedding. While we were in our hotel in Worcester the hurricane blew right over us. The wind and rain was heavy. Then it suddenly stopped. We looked up and saw blue sky. Everything was still and then suddenly the rain and wind came again for about another hour. The hurricane was our omen.”“What did it mean?” I asked.“Well we came back to your dying father and our wedding on November 2^nd and your father died November 7^th. We bought a new house that March and remodeled it over the summer. In the next years my mother died. My father came to live in Nashville and we had to take care of him. Then my aunt and uncle came to live in the same nursing home for us to care for. Then my father died.  Then your mother, then my uncle and then my aunt. I ran for judge. You started an eating disorder program and a batterers program. You wrote and published a book. Betsy was kicked out of King’s Daughters and you had to create a place for Betsy to live nearer to us. We . . .”“Okay, I see what you mean. After we married our life was a whirlwind.”“And the eye of the storm was our marriage,” Marietta said.“Well that’s a very nice thing for you to say.”“Yes it was. That may be where this metaphor breaks down.”“Well what about these metaphors,” I wondered.“The woman’s seizure and the bat. They seem ominous and frightening to me. You discovered the woman laying on her purse. I think she was your omen. My omen was the bat in the window.”“Remember what you say about dreams David. The one who has the dream can rarely decode it because they are afraid. And you can never understand a dream looking at it through afraid eyes.”“Yes, I said that.”“Well maybe you can interpret my omen for me and I can interpret yours. I think, though, that mine was a warning telling me not to go to sleep at the wheel, hence my wreck.”“No,” I said, “the omen in the movie Room with a View was a message to the protagonist to wake up to the passion within her. It was a gift. That’s the way I like to think of omens. They merely tell you what you know, but are not fully conscious of. I think your omen is simply a message to be still after these last years of living in a hurricane. Be still.  Don’t worry about what gear you are in.”“Maybe,” Marietta said. “Now I’ll do yours.”“I think that mine means that AOL and Yahoo will take a dive before I can sell them or something about death.”“No silly, that’s your fear speaking,” Marietta said. “The bat is your friend. They only look scary. They eat mosquitos and flying pests. They pose no threat to humans. He has come to tell you to fly, flap your wings like the eager bat. Don’t be afraid of the darkness. It is your friend.”“What darkness is my friend?” I asked.“Managed care or Travel with me?”“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe the time I get from managed care cutting back my work I can use to write the things I want to write and do more teaching. And you think I’m getting better at traveling with you?”“Yes maybe, so far, that makes sense to me,” Marietta said.“That was fun, playing with fate, and our imaginations. I don’t usually put much stock in dreams and omens like you do, David, but this was okay.”“We get so boxed into our linear daily lives, going from one scheduled case and appointment to the next,” I said. “We need all the help we can get to break out of that box. Playing with omens opens our minds to things we might otherwise never consider. I’m glad you could get into it.”Lessons Learned:

1. Playing dumb is often a useful strategy. The local authorities are glad to believe that you are that stupid and are often compassionate and kind as they shake their heads.
2. Omens can sometimes feel more ominous than playful. It is easy to project fear into mystery. There is as much reason to see hope in an omen as there is to see fear. Consult your partner. Let them think with you. Sometimes it is easier for your partner to see images in a positive frame than it is for you.
3. Create magic, mystery and wonder any place and anyway you can.

Chapter Eighteen: In the MoviesWe emerged from the train in Monteroso. We didn’t have Isabelle to guide and protect us. We didn’t have a book by Frances Mayes to describe how to find heaven on earth in this place. All we had was each other and the seaside.Monteroso was one of the Cinqua Terre, five small towns connected by the trains and a footpath, only. The guidebooks say not by road, but there is a road in the mountains above the towns and there are cars in the towns. Somehow they got there.There seemed to be no omens at the start of this part of the trip but good ones. We made the trip easily. When we got down the stairs to the cab stand, one was there to whisk us off to our hotel. The hotel had garden rooms and our garden had a small table looking out above the town to the ocean.“Let’s go look around,” Marietta invited after putting our things away.I was curious too, so off we went. “There’s a statue up there,” I pointed to something in the rocks above us that seemed to be looking out toward the sea. “Let’s check it out.”“If there are steps to walk up you will find them,” Marietta said.That was true. One of my hidden agendas on this trip was to get as much exercise as I could so that all this food I ate and wine I drank would not add too much to my growing middle. So I was eager to walk up these new steps. We did. We found a statue of St. Francis with his dog looking out to sea. There were more steps above St. Francis and the dog leading to some ruins and a chapel. “Let’s go look at that,” I suggested.“Only if I can go up some more steps.” Marietta said sarcastically.When we got to level ground the chapel door was right in front of us. We opened the chapel door and heard a priest chanting and an audience answering. We went in. About fifteen young people were the audience. The priest was wearing a simple hopsack brown robe and running shoes. My guess as to how St. Francis would dress if he were with us today.He gave a small homile in Italian. The only word Marietta understood was "Franletti del Mare” translated by Marietta means “we are all brothers of the sea.” He finished and the audience broke out into a folk song sung in a round in Italian. This was the first church we entered in Italy that seemed alive to us.We walked out of the chapel and found some more steps leading up and we took them. Soon we found ourselves in a cemetery. This was not an ancient cemetery with Etruscan tombs or names of famous people from history. These were the graves of people who died recently. They went back not much more than seventy-five years. The graves were not in the ground. They were in marble walls. Several holes were open waiting for bodies to be placed in them. All the names were carved in marble. Most of the engravings also had pictures. Somehow these pictures made the reality of what this was more intense. Almost all of the graves had flowers in urns next to the names of the dead. Most of the flowers were plastic, but many were fresh flowers. As we were walking down the steps two women with arms full of flowers were walking up.Many of the graves had death dates inscribed with the year 1945. That was the year this town was bombed, perhaps by US planes. This was fascinating to me.  I wished I could know more.  A first for me.We walked back down the steps and into the town proper. I heard piano music coming from a church.  I went inside. Over 100 prayer candles were burning. On the front row were five college age people, three women and two men. They were listening to a young man play a classical piano piece. His hands raced along the keys. He was intent. When he made a rare mistake he would stop comment to his five friends and re-enter his musical trance. I don’t know how long he played. I just know that his music, the candles, these young people and the three seemingly local Italians, praying in the pews in front of me, put me in a trance. I was sad when he made a final mistake, laughed and stood away from the piano to talk with his friends.The next day we went for the Cinqua Terre obligatory walk from Monteroso to Veranazza. This walk was advertised as a ninety-minute walk, but it took us two hours. It was not treacherous, but the path was narrow in some places. We were never scared, but we climbed high in the mountains. We had beautiful Vistas out over the ocean. Marietta shot more than one roll of film.We came down into Vernazza hungry, tired and thirsty at 12:30. We arrived into the piazza by the ocean, found a restaurant, plopped down at a table and ordered. This was another beautiful place. Colorful fishing boats pulled up on the beach near us. “That boat is just like the one in the picture that I have in my office,” Marietta said. “I bought it at a gallery in Park City, Utah. Its title was only ‘Italian Fishing Boat.’ It had a cat sitting on it.”A black and white cat began to wander among the tables in the restaurant terrace. “That’s the first big cat I’ve seen here,” I said and I pointed to the cat.“Oh that’s it,” Marietta said. “That’s the cat in my picture. Get the camera.” I did and Marietta left the table with the camera trying to catch the cat in a pose. She got very close to the cat, but he wasn’t at the right angle so she tried to pick him up and turn him and she got reprimanded forcefully with a cat scratch.She gave up and came back to the table where she found her food had just arrived along with an accordionist. He was playing for the table next to us. They had tipped him and he accompanied their singing.Our food was served. It was marvelous. I had spaghetti with pesto and Marietta had spaghetti with ‘pescati misti’ a mixture of octopus, clams, shrimp and crab. As we shared dishes, the accordionist captured our mood exactly with his music. A young couple burst into a polka, the table mates next to us followed with a song.“I’m finally in a movie,” I said to Marietta.“What do you mean?” she asked.“When I was a boy I went often to the movies. I thought that when you really made it to that happy place in life, when you had saved the world, got the girl, and had ridden off into the sunset, that suddenly music would begin to accompany your life. When you were sad, sad music would play in the background like in the movies. When you were afraid, the music would accompany your terror. I thought that the movies were how life was supposed to be, but I just hadn’t become enough of a star yet. Well I have now. The music is finally here and it matches just how I feel.” And I burst into song.“You make me feel so young.You make me feel like spring has sprung.”“And who will come to this movie to hear your singing?” Marietta said. Lessons Learned:

1. Go visit cemeteries, especially currently active cemeteries. This will make you evaluate your own life and consider with your partner what you really care about.
2. Collect magic moments. If you are open to be awed, open to wonder and a confluence of events that mystically come together to touch you heart, you will find these emotions by accident on your trip.
3. Don’t mess with cats or dogs in a foreign country, unless you see an owner and the owner says its okay, especially in Cinque Terre.

 Chapter Nineteen: The Low Point

It was our first evening in Monteroso. We found a restaurant recommended by the guidebook, called the Pirate. We were seated on the terrace in the street. I ordered octopus as the appetizer and Marietta had clams and we decided to share the Pescata mista spaghetti for two.The waitress brought the wine and acqua naturale. “This is good table wine. This is the first white wine we’ve had,” Marietta said.“What were some of the problems that you had traveling with me in Germany when you remember me being so difficult?” I asked.“I remember that night by the lake when you wanted to leave and I wouldn’t,” Marietta said. “I will never forget that. You got so mad over nothing.”“Nothing to you maybe, but I still get mad when I’ve had enough and you want more and because I’m with you I must digest some more whether I like it or not.”“I’ve never made you eat food you didn’t want,” Marietta said.“No, digest, absorb, continue on past my limits.”“Poor metaphor.”“Perhaps,” I could feel the anger rising in me now.“You still do that and it still irritates me. You’ve done it everyday on this trip.”“No I haven’t,” Marietta answered. “And besides we are not tied at the hip. We worked that out. If I want to stay at a party and you want to go, I stay, get a ride home and you go on and take the car, or we take two cars.”“Here we’ve only had one car. I don’t think you would appreciate it if I solved my problem leaving you in Perugia and going back to Iesolona.”“No I wouldn’t,” Marietta, “but I still don’t know what you are talking about.”“Remember the time in Florence? You admitted that you were being passive aggressive.”“Yes, but there were other times?”“Everyday!!!” I said and the waitress looked over at us when I added such emphasis to my word. “Okay yesterday when we were walking and you went in the pottery shop.  That was after the linen shop, the wine and olive shop, the churches and the bookstore. I told you, ‘I’m tired. I want to go back to the room and rest before dinner. Let’s go.’ and you said, ‘Oh David, come look at this!’ as if I had said nothing.”I was clearly angry. I had been stuffing my anger about this for the whole trip and it was boiling out now.“Well you don’t have to ruin our dinner with this,” Marietta said. “I’m sorry you ever mentioned it.”“So now we’ve changed the subject to how I’ve brought this up at the wrong time and ignore what I’m angry about,” I said. “When is a good time to bring this up?”“I guess now is as good a time as any. But do you have to get so mad about it?”“I am mad, but I’m really hurt. It feels like to me that we are stuck in a game of limit testing and the way that you reaffirm your feminine strength is to break my limits.” ‘How much can we afford to spend on the couch?’ you ask. I tell you $1000 and then if I really love you, we will spend $2000.”“I don’t say that,” Marietta protested.“No it just turns out that way, but there is some stubbornness added to the game. When we are playing golf and you hit a bad shot, you often throw down another ball to hit the shot over. When people are waiting and I suggest to you not to do it, you do it anyway as if you are announcing that I won’t control you.  Well it’s clear to both of us that I don’t control Judge Shipley. I would like for my limits to have some influence, however. When they don’t I feel hurt, disregarded, rejected and perhaps unloved.”“I don’t ignore you that much,” Marietta said.“Listen to these words. ‘Marietta, come on let’s go.’ ‘Marietta, I’m ready to go now.’ ‘Marietta come on I need to go.’ How many times have you heard me say these words?”“You say them all the time.” she responded.“And do you pay any attention?”“Eventually,” she said, “but you don’t like to linger and look and I do.”“That’s right, but I’ve lingered and looked on this trip to accommodate you.”“Yes you have,” she admitted. “You have been a good traveling partner this trip.”“Well then can you respect my limits?”“I honestly didn’t realize that I wasn’t. I’m sorry. I will try to pay more attention to them.”This was a milestone in my married life. After years of working with relationships I have noticed in me and in others the tendency to believe that when I do something wrong it must be somehow balanced by a wrong done by my partner. So I go in search of balance to find their fault to somehow vindicate mine. Words like, ‘I wouldn’t do that if you didn’t...’ are hallmarks of this search for balance. Following this logic only perpetuates marital blame and pain. The only way out is to do what Marietta did, which is to have the courage to look only at yourself and take control of what you are doing.It is my experience that in most marriages one of the partners can be a bit more difficult to live with than the other. Relationships may be a balanced system somehow, but that can be balanced in needs gratified by subtlety agreed upon roles like caretaker and identified patient (such as with me and Marietta on this trip), but the difficulty-to-live-with ratio is often out of balance.With me and Marietta as with many men and women, I am the-more-difficult-one to live with. So it is rare for me to have the moral high ground and even rarer for me to hear Marietta admit that she too has work to do in our relationship. I am pleased that I behaved well enough not to distract us with my own difficultness so that we could discover some of the little bit of difficultness that Marietta contributes to the relationship. It often happens that when one partner improves, it exposes some work that the other partner needs to do.After this discussion ended our moods improved, just in time to share the Pescata mista. After we finished the waitress gave us an additional limon liqueur as a present, probably to help mellow us from our intense discussion. Gracis. We both appreciated her gift. Lessons Learned:

1. Expect a fight at the two-thirds to three-quarters, much conflict is to be expected as you see the end of the trip begin to loom ahead. You may have spent too much time together without a break. The change in scenery gives you a new perspective on old issues. You have the time to talk.
2. If you are smart and you are being accused of something that is true, apologize and make the appropriate changes. The sooner you do this the better. Resistance to an accurate critique will only prolong the agony.
3. If in a conflict you are the accuser remember you will have your turn to be in the line of fire. Be respectful and careful and respect and protect the communication process.

This story is similar to the one on the Vecor Plateau.Chapter Twenty: Another Most Beautiful PlaceThe next day we got on the train to go to Santa Margherita. Again when we boarded the train in Monteroso and no one checked our ticket. The weather was bleak. It had rained hard all night. Flooding was predicted in Milan. Once again we had arrived at the station with little time to spare. And once again we found great satisfaction in making the correct decision to get on the correct train.It rained hard all the forty-five minutes to Santa Margherita.  It took an hour for a cab to come and fetch us. There were thirteen cabs in Santa Margherita the cab driver told us later and in this storm they were all busy. I didn’t mind the wait so much. It was good to have a reason just to be still after the tension of last night.This was advertised as another “most beautiful place.” And it was beautiful. The storm threw waves at the rocks near the harbor. Great crashes of water came over the rocks and onto the land. There was a dangerous grandeur in the tumult that occurs when liquid, air and matter collide.  And it was fascinating to watch nature explode in waves against rock.A three star hotel means no elevator, or at least it did in the Fasce Hotel. I dragged the two bags up the steps and the wheels were no help with stairs, three flights, one of them a narrow winding one. When I got to our room I had another definition for the word drugged, as a unused past tense of drag.Both Marietta and I seemed to be medicated by the storm. We lay in our beds for a time before we went for an exploratory walk. I read the first English printed newspaper I had found on our trip, while Marietta read what she calls trash. I think this was a novel by Jacqueline Suzanne. We then went on our exploratory walk. We passed statues of Mazzini with a date 1898 and in the center of town by the ocean another statue, this one of Victor Emmanuel. I wished I had a history of Italy. I would have liked to know what these men had to do with this small beautiful seaport.Somehow there was something dissatisfying and disconcerting about this part of our trip. Perhaps it was the aftermath of our fight, the gloomy weather, or the fact that we only had a few days left of our trip. Something wasn’t quite right and neither Marietta nor I knew what it was or what to do. We both felt alienated and a bit lost. There was no human part of Italy that touched us in Santa Margherita as there had been in the Tuscan towns.Frances Mayes wrote about how she broke the code. All American tourists in Italy want to do what she did, get inside the hearts and minds of the Italian people. I think of the tourists to Nashville. Most of Nashville natives are friendly to tourists and point the way to Music Row or Broadway or Second Avenue, but we don’t invite them home to eat or tell them our philosophy of life. There are just too many of them. And to the Italians trying to cope with cities and towns filled with more tourists than locals, and these touristico’s often don’t even speak the language, why should any marginal traveler expect to have a seat at their table and become intimate with how they think and feel.Yet that is what I want. This is the most interesting travel prospect to me, Marietta, and most of the readers of Frances’ books who come to Italy. We want her experience. We want to know Signor Martini as Anselmo, and Francesco and Peppe, Marco and Rudolpho, Placido and his daughter. She told us how to buy a house in Italy, but she kept her secret, the code of how to reach the Italian heart. All we know through reading the book is that she did.What can a town do with tourists trying to become intimate with its citizens? Clearly Frances is right prostitutes aren’t the answer, museums and churches maybe, but these have left me unfulfilled. The food is a good teacher, but not in a restaurant full of only tourists.Nashville has done a pretty good job letting people in by playing people our particular version of opera, heartbreak, fast cars, other women and our peculiar sense of the tragic along with our loyalty to place, home, family, country and God. If the tourist can stomach the twang in the voices and the whine of the fiddle, they can learn something about the hearts of people in Nashville and the hearts of people in our country’s rural heartland in the music they hear in Nashville.We have all got to do better than Disneyland or the adult Disneyland’s of New York, Florence, London and Paris. There must be a creative way to help us satisfy the urge to understand someone who has experienced life differently than we? How are they truly foreign and how are they just the same? I want to know. Frances found out. That was her unique magic. She showed us what she accomplished, but she didn’t teach us how to do it, especially not in the few weeks Marietta and I have here.So we must content ourselves with strolls through towns during Passagiatta, with churches and museums and restaurants recommended by Marietta’s manicurists.The next day we arrived at the train station early for a change. “I got us here early as a concession to you,” Marietta said. “If we had followed my independent judgment we would have gone for another walk, put our feet in the Mediterranean, which we have yet to do, and then gotten here just in time. But coming to the station so near to the departure time makes you nervous.”“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m the one pulling these bags up the steps and heaving them on to the train and grabbing the door just before the last whistle and the train begins to move.”“Well you should be happy now.”“I am, thank you.”A modern looking train without any graffiti pulled up. The announcer spoke in Italian. I hear the words, “Genova” and “Milan.”“Is this our train?” I asked Marietta. “I think it is our train.”Marietta ran to look at the board.“This could be our train. I should have checked. The one we are waiting on though goes directly to Como (our next destination). This one goes to Milan, but there is a connecting train to Como every hour.”“Oh should we get on this train?” I said worried.“I don’t know, maybe,” Marietta admitted.We are both worried that we have made the wrong choice as the train pulls out.Our train comes a few minutes later. “This one won’t require moving a single bag until we get to our destination. I like this one better,” I said.“See,” Marietta said, “when we don’t have anything to worry about. And we are early with plenty of time, we create something to worry about. We have just as much anxiety either way.”She was right.Lessons Learned:

1. Beautiful places actually get boring. And after you have seen one gorgeous vista after another an emptiness can begin to stir. It is easy to blame your mate as the reason you are not excited when the surroundings are exquisite. The problem can be that you are disconnected from yourself, your home, and the application of your talents. Somehow you can tire of seeing beautiful places when you don’t feel that you have a purpose. When you get here you should begin to wind down your trip and prepare to come home.
2. Worry is a constant companion when traveling in unknown territory. Will we make the train? Is this the right road? What should we order? What did I say? If you don’t really have anything to worry about you will create something. It is nice to have someone to share those fears with. Don’t shame your partner for their worries. You will have silly worries too.

Chapter Twenty-one: Breasts

This is frightening to write about. I feel as if I’m going to confession as I do. But what did I do? I looked at what was in front of me (and beside me. I never turned all the way around to look at what was behind me).There I was in Monteroso waiting for Marietta by the wall above the beach while she was checking on train departure times, minding my own business looking at the swimmers playing with the strong sea waves from the storm, when a young woman emerges from the water and pulls off her bathing suit top for all the world to see. She grabs a towel and dries her body right there in front of me. And if that’s not enough when she is finished another woman provides the same show. And I look. I’m not the only one. There are at least twenty men hanging over the wall pretending that they are not looking, trying not to be caught staring. Or at least I hope I’m not the only one intruding on these women’s privacy. Or am I intruding or am I irrelevant?I remember a time when I was a house parent for the Peg, a home for teenage runaway girls in Dallas, Texas. Jane, one of the girls staying there, used to wear tank tops and pull them up or down in traffic and other places, flashing whomever. I thought her irreverence was a hoot. There was nothing sexual to Jane’s gesture. She did it purely for shock value.One day Jane was with me while I was visiting John, a friend of mine, who was in law school. And I prompted her to flash him. What happened next I did not expect.“How dare you,” he said. “I take my sexuality very seriously. My arousal is not something you can play with. F - - - you too” and he stormed off.Until I came to Italy I thought John was right. I had been wrong to encourage Jane to take her body so lightly. I should have discouraged her flashing behavior. I should have helped her take her sexual self more seriously, (her breasts in particular), and helped her be more careful and protective of her feminine gifts.In Italy women weren’t flashing like Jane did, but they were not careful about showing their breasts. “They are just not as big here,” Marietta said.“What do you mean?”“Italian women have smaller breasts than American women,” she said.“I don’t believe that, but if American women wore the blouses I see here we would have no trouble measuring.”“What do you mean? What’s the big deal?” Marietta said.“When you were shopping yesterday they showed you every blouse in the place. All of them, every one was too sheer for you. They covered nothing. All the young women wear these sheer blouses or the tight body fitting blouses with no bra or they wear tops with spaghetti straps revealing a lot of cleavage, leaving nothing to the imagination. And on the beach they just change clothes.”“So what?” Marietta said.“Well, I don’t know ‘so what.’”All I knew was that I was confused about this. Marietta and I used to do a comedy talk radio show called, ‘Radio for the Matrimonially Challenged.’ I would write skits for a country couple who would pretend to call in. They were Billy Bob and Lorraine. Marietta played Lorraine.“Marietta,” I said, “what about this as a skit for Billy Bob and Lorraine at the beach in Monteroso.”Billy Bob (standing at sea wall): Lorraine come here and look, you got to see this.Lorraine: Well that girl is mighty proud of what God gave her. Billy Bob . . . Stop looking.Billy Bob: I’m not looking. She’s showing.Lorraine: Billy Bob I’m past menopause and you got what Bob Dole calls E.D., Erectile Deficiency. So don’t be getting any ideas.  Stop looking Billy Bob (slam! Lorraine hits Billy Bob with her purse). Now come over here where you can’t see.Billy Bob: But if I don’t see hers plum all the way to the skin, there’s that one’s nipples sticking straight out at me through that tight blouse over there and next to her is another woman whose cleavage is calling to me.Lorraine: One thing is for sure Billy Bob. They sure ain’t calling you. And if they was you wouldn’t know what to do with them.Billy Bob: (As they walk away from the beach) Back home I wonder what the preacher would say about this. He couldn’t preach that world-is-coming-to-an-end sermon because you can’t tell a girl from a boy no more. Cause you can’t miss what’s a girl here.I remember a young girl I once saw in therapy, she was a senior in high school. She had what my mother would call a cute figure, meaning she had Marilyn Monroe breasts. Her figure was not always an asset for her.One day she told me.“Here I am at my locker. I turn around and there this guy is standing, staring at my chest. I told him ‘just get over it.’”Said another way I’m not taking responsibility for your arousal or your obsession with my breasts. This seemed to be the clear message of the Italian women. Yes, they had breasts. And yes, they are pretty and these women are not ashamed of them, but they are just breasts. If they arouse you, “get over it.”I remember when I was fourteen years old with my buddies in the gym dressing room. We discovered a hole drilled through the concrete block separating the girl’s dressing room from the boys. We all lined up. Each of us could look through for thirty seconds hoping to catch a look at Barbara Bennett’s breasts.If Barbara Bennett had been in Italy you could have seen them. “So what,” Marietta’s question begins to penetrate. So what?My cousin the artist, Carol Cole, draws nothing but breasts. She is a feminist artist and she believes that he male fixation on the female breast is imprisoning to women and that women can’t let men define them through their male projections onto the breast and what it means. The breast is a symbol of feminine beauty, of course, she would say, but it is just a breast, a female mammary gland. Women should show it for what it is. “Don’t let the Christian and the Islamic fundamentalists cover women in the shame of clothes,” she would say. “Women, don’t put on more clothes, take them off. Men will just have to deal with it.”In Italy I feel like I’m beginning to deal with it. Lessons Learned:

1. Sex is definitely one of the things you both will wonder about in a foreign country. Is this the place where the anthropologists say all the citizens have extra-marital lovers and it is accepted and well known? How do people court here? When do they give themselves permission to have sex? How much shame is associated with sex? These are questions that you both will have, so bring them up. Talk about them.
2. Compare the sexual mores of the culture you are visiting with your past and your culture’s values. Laugh as much as you can about how silly you are about all this.

Chapter Twenty-two: Como is Bellier

The last part of our trip was in Lake Como. The combination of huge mountains, lake, palm, trees, gardens and many parks made Lake Como and environs arguably the most beautiful place in Italy. Not that we would know, but that’s what the travel books say and we couldn’t argue with them.I know the Frances and Ed probably wouldn’t like this place, too crowded, urban, not at all down-home Italian. I liked it immediately; lots of wide sidewalks through parks where I could take a morning jog, incomparable vistas and people lived here, not just tourists.Marietta observed all the stereotypes about Milan and north Italy. People spend more money on clothes, wore gold chains and expensive watches. On the streets there were more big cars; BMW’s, Lancia’s, and Alfa Romeo’s. We saw a Maserati and a Jaguar for the first time in Italy here. To make matters worse we overheard some American tourist say, “I’ve been all over Italy and I like this place the best.” I’m sorry Frances and Ed, I did too and I feel bad about that.It could be because I love golf and they had five golf courses within an hour. It could be because we got a good price on a better hotel, one with elevators. It could be because there seemed to be an economy here that was not built on tourism. Como makes silk fabrics used in Italian fashion. I don’t know the reason, but I feel a sort of energy in some cities, Nashville has it. So does Austin, Texas. So does Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So does Chicago. Memphis doesn’t. Dallas doesn’t. Atlanta doesn’t. Little Rock is getting it. Seattle has it. San Francisco had it, now its in Santa Cruz.  New York’s got it. LA doesn’t.  And Como has it, whatever “it” is.Como has its Duomo Cathedral like many other Italian cities. It may not be as old and the guidebooks may not have too much to say about it (or at least the ones we consulted), but it is as grand a cathedral as any I had seen. The stained glass was obviously newer and looked more like paintings. They had several tapestries hanging and we hadn’t seen that before in Italy. The Biblical scenes represented in the art were the same.Once we entered the cathedral I found a place in the pew while Marietta looked around. Over to my left was a small line of people. I looked to see what they were in line for and I saw that they were waiting their turn to see the priest. He was sitting in a booth, not a private booth, but an open one, facing out toward the church. In front of the priest knelt a young woman. His head was bowed and so was hers. She was talking. He had a book in front of him and when she finished he read from it. Then it appeared that he prayed, gave the sign of the cross, and she got up, found a pew and began her own separate prayer.The next thing the priest did was look at his watch before he motioned to the next in line. That’s when I knew. This was therapy. The priests were the first to do it and confession was therapy’s first draft, way before Freud. The priest had some advantages over me and other therapists. He was working with someone who had a shared spiritual faith with him. He had a transcendent power that he could appeal to for help. Where we had diplomas, he had a prayer shawl, a collar and a robe. But we therapists put more time into it. His confession ritual lasted about ten minutes. Therapy usually lasts fifty. In the confession ceremony he did a lot of talking, more talking than listening. Therapists hopefully do more listening than talking.But with that woman, he was trying to do the same thing I try to do, open her to her own wisdom, help her remember that she is lovable and precious. Therapists rarely can use prayer. And I was impressed by that young woman’s prayerful response to the confessional ritual. I wondered how many people pray before or after their visits to my office.I was drawn to get in line, to be absolved from my sin, cleansed and renewed. I knew it would do me good, but I didn’t know the language or the ritual in English or Italian. I will have to ask my friends, Bill and Patty, to teach me.I found these rituals of kneeling and giving the sign of the cross, lighting candles, sitting in the pews in the sanctuary, praying, and the confession to be attractive. I imagined that they did create humility that may allow some sort of access to the spirit that people don’t have in their everyday going and doing life. I wished that I had them given to me by my religious tradition.When we left the church we went shopping. Italy is like that, from the sacred to profane. I think I know why tourists like to shop, at least I know why Marietta and I do (but me much less than Marietta). Shopping gives us a role. By shopping we go from marginal onlooker to valued customer. That’s a big jump. We have something to say to someone and that person appears to want to understand. They have something to tell us too about their part of Italy, their store. If you are smart, like Marietta you ask them as much other information as you can while you are buying. In this setting Italians want to talk to you.“Do you live here?” Marietta inquired of this twenty-year-old attractive sales woman.“Yes.”“Do you like it here?”“Well I come from Marseille. I met this Italian man and I moved here with him. It did not work out. It’s difficult to get in. It is very tight here. You say closed. Right?”“Yes.”“I go back to Marseille when I get enough money to move all my furniture.”“What do you like about this place?”“It is beautiful, especially in the summer, the water and the mountains. Oh try this blouse with that. Do you like?”“What don’t you like about Italy?”“The emotion. I’m not used to people getting mad and then they just get over it. Not me. I don’t like to get mad and I don’t get over mad so soon. You call it something.”“Temper.”“Yes, the Italians have temper. I don’t like. That looks very good on her, yes?”And she looks at me.“Yes,” I said.“What do you enjoy here?”“I love hikes in mountains and in winter, skiing only two hours drive from here, good snow in winter, but here not too cold. Try this scarf with that.”And the conversation goes on, talking with someone from here, well, from Marseille and that’s close to here. Shopping gives us a small opening. It is sad that you must use money to get it, but trade gives access. That is U.S./China policy anyway.  And here, it is true. Trade gives you leverage and a legitimate reason to be there. It made us feel good to buy from there and have a right to have some sort of relationship with real people. Frances did the same thing in Cortona. Her money bought her entrée into the lives of Italian workers, shopkeepers and neighbors.From the store we jumped on a boat and rode across the lake to Bellagio. There were some famous gardens there, Giardini di Villa Melzi, which Marietta wanted to see. It was pretty, but I was more fascinated with the boat that took us there. We had two choices in boats, a normal boat that because of its slower speed and many stops took two hours to get to Bellagio and a hydrofoil that got us there in thirty minutes, even with three stops. The hydrofoil had water skis. When one water skis and the boat pulling the skier gets going fast enough, a person can pop right up and skim across the water. And that’s what this boat did. When it got going fast enough it hydraulically pushed its skis forward and the boat came up out of the water just like a person on skis being pulled by a boat.The gardens were beautiful, azaleas and rhododendrons were the garden’s chief attractions and we were late for those but I was impressed by what were obviously redwood trees or some like species. They were tall and beautiful like those on the California coast.In the Malzi family chapel I was intrigued and disgusted by the sculpture of Christ and the cross. Here was this obviously arrogant man leaning on this small shoulder high cross that seemed to serve more as a prop than anything else. Though I thought the spiritual message was trite, I wondered if the artist was really making fun of this arrogant powerful rich family by putting such an insipid representation of Christ here. In that light I had much more sympathy with this work.When we returned from Balagio, Marietta and I were walking around Como Centre and we came upon this restaurant, Le Braziliera. “Let’s try this,” Marietta said.“But Marietta, it’s not Italian. We came to Italy to eat what Italians eat.”“I know,” Marietta said, “but lets eat here. I see someone inside setting up to play. So they must have music.”About 8:45 we show up and they seated us. The place was full. No Americans, the first time for us in Italy where the whole place spoke Italian except us. Lots of cigarette and cigar smoke. A surefire sign you are in a place where Italians eat.I know what happened to the live-for-today, sensuous Etruscans. The Romans drove them underground into tombs and they dug out the other side and came up in Brazil.Marietta was right they did have entertainment. A man playing the guitar with a pre-recorded rhythm machine and a woman singing. The food came as a fixed menu. There was a salad bar as the first course. The bar had cooked asparagus, hearts of palm, minced carrots and raisin salad, cucumber, tomato and yellow and red pepper salad, cooked corn, grilled eggplant and more. I got too much, of course. Then came the starches, a cooked banana, rice with black bean gravy, onion rings, french fries and fried polenta. In the midst of eating these the waiter came out with swords skewering squares of meat, chicken thighs, pork ribs, beef steaks, pork chops, sausage, or folds rare roast beef.  He would place the sword tip down on your plate and push off as much of the meat as you wished to eat. The house wine was plentiful and all this time we were serenaded with some version of Dionne Warwick singing Brazilian melodies. The waiters sang with the singer. They knew every word of every song. The singer took a break, but we didn’t. We just kept on eating.Suddenly from the kitchen came clanging pots, shouts, yells, claps and stomps. The music volume went up and out came two women clad only in thongs, that’s right, the underwear Monica Lewinsky made famous and a bra. The front of the bras and the thong had silk flowers attached. They were shimmying and shaking every way they could. Then out came a male dancer. He had on an unbuttoned shirt and pants that were sheer from hip down. He began what looked like to me oral sex with one of the women, but it wasn’t. Instead it was choreographed dance that looked like every sex act and position imaginable.The room was shocked and excited. The music changed. One of the women began pulling people out of their chairs to dance. Marietta was jerked out of her chair and into a dance line behind the three dancers. It soon became clear that she was to move in step and pelvis thrust with them. Marietta was game. She put all of her German heritage for bosanova rhythm into action. She and the other non-professionals soon found a version of the dance that they could do.They were having a good time. It was erotic, but it wasn’t. It was the electric slide but it wasn’t. What it was was fun, a celebration of the body, its sexuality, its potential to move and discover pleasure. The Italian audience quickly got over their shock and clearly they had the clapping, shaking and shimmying skills to become active participants. The bumps and grinds were applauded, sometimes met with a man or woman jumping up to get into the bump and grind contest. The waiters joined in when they could, pulling the audience along with them. Just as suddenly as it began, it ended. The music stopped, the dancers disappeared.Marietta returned to the table fully clothed and intact with an ear-to-ear grin. “I hope you weren’t too embarrassed.”“No,” I said and I meant it.We got back to eating and crash we heard, a second kitchen disaster or something and out came one of our waitresses dressed as a belly dancer accompanied to strong intense Latin music. She bumped and ground too but with a different style and more athleticism. She picked on the men and taunted them and she challenged the women to do the same, but she was too accomplished for anyone in the audience to match. With a sudden bang the music stopped and she quickly slid back into the kitchen.Again we returned, a bit overwhelmed now, to the eating the food part of this sensuous experience. And then another bang from the kitchen. This time we knew it wasn’t a disaster. Out came the original three dancers in different versions of thong and bra etc. This time with feather headdresses and feathers attached to what little material there was. One of the women danced toward the cash register. She called the cashier out on the floor. This woman was dressed, no dance outfit. Her body was not perfect, but when she began to dance, she moved as amazingly as the woman in the thong and was every bit as sensuous and attractive. They danced back to the audience. The cashier began pulling people out of their chairs. This time they got both Marietta and me and suddenly we were in a conga line that snaked all over the restaurant. Bumba, bump a bump ah, bumba, bump a bump ah. Eight times around the floor until we were exhausted. We sat but the dancers continued with a frenetic display, much like a dancing version of the end of a fireworks finale.Surely that was the end and it was. The cultures of Italy and Brazil had blended perfectly together in this evening. And we were there, much closer than Walter Cronkite ever put us. Neither of us knew quite what to say when we got home. We both knew what to do, but we were too full, too drunk, too exhausted and too old to take advantage of the evenings invitation. We fell in bed and to sleep immediately upon our return to our room.“Como much Bellier than Tuscany, Yes?” I said to Marietta as we drifted off to sleep.“Yes,” she answered. Lessons Learned:

1. Look to see how the roles that you play personally and professionally are played in this place. This will give you perspective on yourself and your culture. For example, I would be interested in how people heal emotional pain here. Marietta might be interested in how the judicial processes work here.
2. When you shop, be sure to talk with the person that attends you. Ask them as many questions as you can. Usually they will be happy to talk with you.
3. Go to places where the local people have fun. This might be to the opera, or to a bar or to a concert. But go and join in, when you can.
4. For people over fifty bring Viagra. You never know when you will need it.

 Chapter Twenty-three: What to Do When I Die?Last night at about 10:00 PM, Italian time, 3:00 PM Nashville time, I called Gloria, my secretary, who was tending fires, my sister Betsy’s many fires and whatever else came up at work. Marietta had asked on my last call back to tell Barbara at her office that she could call her here if she needed Marietta for anything.“Oh,” I said to Gloria, “did you call Barbara at Marietta’s office?”“Yes, I did,” she said. “And Barbara said that they were doing fine without her, we don’t need to talk to her for anything.” I laughed and yelled to Marietta changing just one word, “They don’t need you for anything. They are doing fine without you.”Marietta glared out at me from the bathroom at the pleasure I was taking in her dispensability. Then Gloria asked me, “What do I do when you die?” Quickly I wasn’t laughing anymore. We had been away two weeks and four days and the world was plastering over the holes we had left in it when we exited Nashville. We needed to get back soon or we would be completely dispensed with and irrelevant. My secretary wanted to know what she should do when I died so that the ocean of time after I’m gone can wash away my existence.As we near the time for return both Marietta and I expect a fight to come upon us. It hasn’t yet, but certainly it will either on the plane back or as we unpack our bags at home. We have had such a re-entry conflict every time we have been away. It is the way we express our fears. I’m afraid, that being away so long from my professional role as a therapist, that I won’t know how to do therapy anymore. I’m afraid my clients won’t need me. Marietta has the same fears about being a judge, but she doesn’t have the worry of losing her clients.I’m afraid of getting back to the pressure of managing life with things and people depending on me, my sister, our house, the cat. I had a dream last night that I was back in church where I’m supposed to teach a relationship enrichment class this coming Wednesday night. I’m lost. I don’t know where the class is being held. It is in a special place. I meet people who are leaving because I’m not there. I finally find the room. I’m exhausted. I lie on the table. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be talking about. I ask, “can someone tell me what you have been doing for the last two weeks” in hopes that by listening to them summarize their previous class’s experience that I can somehow orient myself. Then I awaken. I am confused about what this means and what I want.I want to stay on vacation, sleep until I wake up, do whatever it is that occurs to me next. I don’t want to lose this world of freedom I’ve discovered. No, I want to get back, to re-establish a place that is mine, to find the place where my name means something, where I’m wanted and needed. I’m tired of the emptiness of freedom. “No dammit Marietta do you know how much I’ve got to do when I get back?” I will say. “Dammit David do you know how much I have to do when I get back,” will be her reply.  We are both afraid of the onslaught. We both feel betrayed to have to return, after this taste of life without a care (except for those cares we invented). Yet we both want to return to a place where we belong, to our home and friends, we both feel the push to go back and the pull to stay.On our last day the turbulence created by this tension began as soon as we awoke at 5:30 A.M., so that we could shower, pack, ride to the airport, check-in, change money, go through the tax-free customs to get money back from our too many value-added-tax purchases and make a 7:30 flight. “Customs upstairs is closed,” Marietta informed me. “We have to go downstairs and then take our bags back to British Airways and check in.”“You mean we have to show them the stuff we bought when we have our receipts,” I said. “It took fifteen minutes for the store clerk to fill out all these papers.” My difficult curmudgeon spirit was rearing its head.“Yes, let’s take the bags down.”So we did.“Excuse’ Senora you must have bags passed through security machine before you get to customs,” the security guard said to Marietta.“But our bags won’t fit through that small hole!” And Marietta pointed at the opening big enough for only backpacks and purses.“Sorry, Senora.”“This is it. It is the European Union’s way to beat you out of getting your tax money back,” I said. “They make it so difficult that you will give up. So let’s give up.”“No,” Marietta said. “Let me try one more time. I’ll go with just the papers.”She went. They stamped her papers without asking us to unpack our bags.“We were lucky,” I grumbled.“Yes we were,” Marietta said.In Manchester we changed from British Airways to American Airlines. We had to check in again.“Where did you buy your bags?”“How long have you owned them?”“When did you pack them?”“Where did you pack them?“Have they been out of your sight since you packed them?”“Do you have any electronic equipment?”“Radios? Computers? Hair dryer? Electric iron?”“When did you buy it?”“Where did you buy it?”“Has anyone given you anything to carry on?”She looked at my passport picture. “Sir please take off your hat.” She looked at my face, then at my picture.She looked over our tickets.“Do you have an advantage credit card?“Yes.”“May I see it?”“No I’ve packed it away? Why does she want my credit card?” I whispered to Marietta. This interrogation and issuing of boarding passes took fifteen minutes and we were at the head of the line. I was tired and irritable.“I’ve got to mail the Value-Added-Tax Vouchers and I don’t have any stamps.”“That’s how they get you,” I growled. “Okay I will go find stamps.” And I did. I no longer had Italian money and I certainly had no English currency. Luckily they took a credit card. Marietta hadn’t packed hers.“Where can I mail these?”I scouted out a mailbox.“I’m thirsty,” Marietta said.“They are going to feed you and drown you in juice and coke on the plane in twenty minutes.”“I’m thirsty now.”“OK,” and she goes off to buy orange juice.“Do you want some toast?” she said upon her return.“No they will feed us too much when we get on the plane. Why did you buy toast?”Here we have turbulence at the boundary again and the beginnings of our re-entry squabbles. After this interaction I knew that we were going home. My secretary can’t start washing me away just yet.

Lessons Learned:

1. As you begin to pack for the return home expect tension and conflict.
2. It is natural to be afraid to return and it is equally natural to be afraid that home won’t be the same when you return. Hopefully the trip has changed you in some way. You are correct to wonder how this new you will fit into your old world.

 Chapter Twenty-four: Going Home with Lesson s Learned

My quest you ask. What did I learn? How was I tested? Am I a changed man?On our last night in Italy we went to dinner at a small family restaurant in a small, population of twenty-five, village, near the airport. We ate a delicious meal, risotto with pear and arugula. We shared a steak and grilled potatoes and pork loin and vegetables. We were sitting talking, eating, drinking wine and holding hands, when the Japanese man across from us who had just finished off most of two bottles of wine by himself raised his glass to us and said, ‘Congratulations you happy married,’ and he pointed to our joined hands.Well that made me believe that I had passed one test that I gave myself and that I was overcoming the specter of becoming like my father. I wanted to become a better travel companion with my wife than my father was with my mother. That was part of my quest. According to our kind Japanese table neighbor I had defeated my father in this. Somehow I don’t think my father would mind.I still believe my father and I are cut from the same cloth. My father spent his lifetime fighting external threats, a psychotic father that was financially dependent on him, a daughter born with Down’s Syndrome, his first born dead at nineteen. He overcame these threats to his security and well-being, but he had little time to work on his internal demons. I’ve had my whole adult life focused on learning about relationships and feelings. Most of what I do is fight my own internal demons while I help other people fight theirs.  It is no surprise that I may have been able to become a better travel companion than he was.He carried this difficult male gene that he inherited and he improved on his father’s sanity. It is only right that I pick up this same burden and improve on his record. I know that he is rooting for me.What did I learn from my journey? My first teachers were Christian and Isabelle. They bought a new Paris flat two years ago and according to Christian that decision completely changed their marriage. They and their two children had lived in a very spacious apartment, (enough room to accommodate out of town guests easily) near Notre Dame Cathedral. It was well located, had a prestigious address and it was rent controlled, very inexpensive. There was no need to move, except that Isabelle found it very dark. It was on the bottom floor and very little light from outside penetrated its four-foot walls. It was next door to Christian’s parents. To see inside this apartment one needed electric lights at midday in July. Certainly it served the family well. It was perfect when Thomas and Charlotte were toddlers. As they become older they complained they need more light and more privacy.  Oh Thomas sometimes had asthma because of the mold, but he had medicine to deal with that and the medicine worked.For years Christian resisted Isabelle’s request for a place with more light and away from his parents. Couldn’t afford it on his medical training salary; saving for retirement; got to send kids to camp; it was expensive coming to train in America. Finally he relented, but it must be something that would give each child separate rooms and Christian a study. Isabelle found it. They bought it and moved.“I don’t know what it is,” Isabelle said. “I think it is the light. The children love it too. We have dinner every night on the terrace in the summer. We have windows, lots of them that see the sun, skylights too.”“She never cooked before,” Christian said. “I was the cook. Now she loves to cook and she is a wonderful cook. The children love it too and so do I. She’s very happy. I never knew her so happy.”“Yes,” Isabelle agreed.At mid-life, their children almost launched, Christian did something very important. He allowed his wife to influence him to take a risk, a risk that cost him their savings, a risk that required him to leave his boyhood home. Surely he had to explain to his mother and father who gave them this apartment, “Why is this not good enough for you?”But he did it . . . for Isabelle. His mid-life investment paid off for him big time. You could see it in the way Isabelle looked at him. Oh she could have been content in her old home. Her marriage wasn’t threatened. It would have continued, but without the spark that is there now because her husband supported her vision of a new home and new life.That’s what I learned from Christian and Isabelle. At mid-life I must marry Marietta again. Risk for her. Invest for us and negotiate with her a new vision for us. Our marriage would continue without this. It is strong, but the spark, the warm smile on Marietta’s face today comes in part from me being a fun fellow traveler, moving out of my comfort zone into a new-shared adventure together like Christian and Isabelle.Thomas and Charlotte were also our teachers. It was fascinating to glimpse at the world through the eyes of Thomas and Charlotte. When we were with them we wondered about them constantly. Oh we knew what we thought, but we were eager to know their thoughts. Being in a nurturing role for children at fifty is a blessing. Thomas and Charlotte brought with them enthusiasm and curiosity that opened up wonder and magic to me and Marietta at middle age.Children at any age help re-open magic, mystery, and awe to old jaded me and less jaded but older by six months, Marietta.  Thomas and Charlotte are at the precipice of a special dramatic time of life. They are emerging from their family’s roots and flying into career choices, romantic adventures and independent life choices. They are about to open a door to an unknown adult world. At this moment that world is all potential. Its potential will soon become expressed in commitments, work products and relationships. We cannot help but look at Thomas and Charlotte, wonder and imagine. It is quite exciting and intoxicating to watch them.For a small time we were privileged to be adopted as aunt and uncle to Thomas and Charlotte, privileged to be infected by the delight and magic that filled their lives. Our quest, whatever it is to be, must include children and their natural urges to question, search, and explore. Mid-life, that is the test that this trip faced me with. My next teacher was Frances Mayes and Ed. Her books, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany weren’t only my travel guides, they taught me the point of a trip like this one. It is okay to be afraid because travel will change you, if you let it. Perhaps after this I will never be the same. Fear is an essential element to adventure. If you aren’t afraid you aren’t risking very much. If you risk you have every right to be afraid.And certainly Frances was afraid when she wrote a check for millions of lira for Bramasole. She was afraid that her middle age or the second half of her life would be small, bitter and cruel. She was afraid that this purchase would be her ruin, that Ed would tire of Italy, Bramasole, the work and her. She had no guarantees, no way of knowing that her financial future was not lost with this decision. Bitterness would then surely find her, like it found her mother and grandmother. But it didn’t. Money is not the only thing that she invested. She had been traveling to Italy for twenty-five years. She learned the language. She studied the culture. She scrubbed the Italian floors of Bramasole. She dug in Italian dirt.  She cooked Italian food. And Ed was her partner in it all, pruning the olive trees, building the terraces.In mid-life Frances and Ed taught me that you need more than sex and co-parenting to hold a relationship together. To flourish at mid-life a couple must do something akin what Frances and Ed did. A couple must risk it again like they did when they married at twenty-one, visualize a new vision together and go for it. Every time Ed pruned the olive trees he was making love to Frances and in her books you can hear her moans of appreciation. Every time Frances prepared a meal of pesto and pasta, bathed in olive oil with wine to wash it down, she aroused Ed’s passion for her.Marietta and I are at mid-life. We have accomplished many of the goals we had in our twenties. This trip has taught us that we must now consider a new marriage, with different goals. Ours won’t be to buy a villa in Italy. It will be a commitment to something else. Neither of us was sure what it would be.Once we returned from our trip Ellen McPherson (whom you might remember in the first chapter as the friend who helped me precipitate Marietta’s tears) called and asked if Marietta and I would share a walk with her. I explained to her that Marietta was out of town, but that I would very much like to walk around Radnor Lake with her and tell her about our trip. We met and began our walk on the nature trail.“I am dying to hear how everything went. If you behaved, and if you had fun,” she said.“I saw beautiful places. I discovered questions I never even knew I had. Yes, I am curious about Rome and the Italian Alps, but why is this a good thing? I can’t afford to go back anytime soon. The best thing about the trip was Isabelle and Christian and their children and we can’t move in with them. I’m not sure that I wasn’t happier before I went. Why can’t Marietta be content with the life we have here?”“David,” Ellen pronounced my name with an exasperated sigh. “You haven’t learned a thing. I thought you were going to try to change your attitude.”“I tried. I didn’t speak many of the complaints and hrumphs that came into my head. I enjoyed the gelato. Seeing the Tuscan hills from Cortona and other points of view was like being a hawk in a thermal looking over the vineyards, olive groves, pastures, lakes and forests. The people were warm and welcoming, but there are pretty views and nice people on Monteagle Mountain 100 miles from Nashville and they speak English.”“Did Marietta have a good time?” Ellen inquired.“Yes, I think so. But you know I’m not sure. I think I was not a drag, but I wasn’t an enthusiastic co-traveler. I would give myself a passing grade, a C+ or B-.”“Sounds more like a C or C- to me,” Ellen said. “David you have a lot to learn.”“But I learned a lot.”“What?”“I learned a couple should talk to each other about the trip before they go. They should negotiate what to do and where to go. They should talk about their fears, create roles, expectations. It’s a luxury to have friends who live where you are going.”Suddenly a doe leaped across our path and her fawn bounced close behind her.We were both silent while we watched them disappear in the autumn foliage around the lake.“What’s more beautiful than that?” I asked.“David beauty is not the point.”“What is the point?” I wondered.“You travel in order to know yourself. Travel is not just about a strange place. It is about shifting your perspective so that you discover how you act and react outside your familiar world. Yes you did learn that you are not the only person on the planet and that Marietta’s purpose for existence is not to please you. You learned that how you act can contribute positively or negatively to the atmosphere of your life together. And you perhaps learned that on a trip this is very important because Marietta has no way to escape you. She has no office to go to, no case to hear. But you didn’t learn very much about yourself.”

Chapter Twenty-five: Going Again

It is four years since our trip to Italy and I still have a lot to learn according to Ellen. We were planning our next trip, this time to France for three weeks.A week before we left to go to Europe we had Sunday breakfast with our friend, Ellen at Bongo Java’s. We each brought our dogs. Ellen brought her 120 lb. German Shepard, Max, that she rescued from the pound and Marietta and I brought our much smaller Greco, an “imperfect” Portuguese waterdog.We found our seats outside on the porch under giant oaks. Soft leaf filtered light created a sanctuary for own breakfast communion. Our two dogs greeted one another with noses in butts, while we hugged. Soon we were settled in our seats with tea, coffee, bagels and eggs.“So you are traveling abroad again.” Ellen said.“Yes,” Marietta answered for us. I had decided to be quiet since our last conversation here before going to Europe had gotten me in so much trouble.“So where are you going?”“We will fly to Marseille. We will be there by ourselves there for a couple of days. Then we will drive our rental car to Buis les Baronnies where we will meet Isabelle and Christian at a rented half of a duplex in the Baronnies Mountains.”“How do you know Isabelle and Christian?” Ellen wondered.“Don’t you remember? They hosted us in Paris on our last trip. Isabelle came here with Christian when he was at Vanderbilt on a Cardiology research fellowship. She is a psychologist. Hans Strupp introduced her to David. She had nothing to do professionally in Nashville so David invited her to do some things with him. They became good friends and we had Isabelle and Christian over for dinner and got to know their children. They have more than returned the favor in their hospitality toward us. We have been trying to interest them in a shared vacation for some time. They agreed to meet up with us in Provence this summer for two weeks.”“Have you ever been on a vacation with someone that long before?” Ellen asked.“No,” Marietta answered.“Well how will that go? You have David who we know can be a pain. I thought that Christian considered himself equal to David as a hrumphing curmudgeon. How is this going to be fun for you?”I was very glad to be silent here and was intensely interested in Marietta’s answer.“Well I hope that Isabelle will want to go places and if David and Christian don’t they can stay at the apartment. I think it could be better for both Isabelle and me. Perhaps David and Christian would be happier because they won’t feel drug around by us. Because there are several of us we can have a companion or be alone when we want. David and Christian can complain to each other.”“Well David what about you? You’ve been very quiet.”“What about me?”“Are you looking forward to this trip?”“Well yes and no.”Marietta interrupted. “David, Lisa (her court officer) called home to leave a message and you answered. She said to you that you sounded depressed and she said you answered that she was right you were depressed. Are you?”“I guess I am,” I confessed.That was a significant difference from last time. Last time my fear and sadness at leaving was covered with anger, denial, innocence and heroism. I was the wonderful indulgent husband who was suffering a trip to Italy out of my great love for my wife. She, of course, was expected to be grateful for my sacrifice and adore me for my willingness to endure this ordeal. If she didn’t my anger and irritability were at the ready to remind her how lucky she was to have a great hero like me, sacrificing for her pleasure and happiness.This time I knew I couldn’t get away with this posture, though I would have liked to. I was reduced to the naked truth.Yes, I am depressed.“Why,” Marietta asked.“I don’t know. Maybe its because our house is being remodeled and we don’t have running water in the kitchen. Dust covers everything. I have a cough from all the sawdust and powder from the laid and sanded wallboard mud. The roof leaks. The contractor has been promising that the roofer, the plumber and the electrician would be here tomorrow for the last week and a half. I count on it every time he says they will come. Each time they don’t I get disappointed. The painter’s truck won’t run; the roofer had a nervous breakdown; the cabinet-maker had a heart attack. The electricians are behind. Perhaps those disappointments stack up. I don’t know.”And then I spoke the words Marietta did not want to hear, but suspected. “Then there is the trip.”“What about the trip? I thought you were excited this time?”“Well I am. I want to see the Tour de France. That would be fun. I want to see Isabelle, Christian and Charlotte. But we don’t speak the language. How are we going to even rent a car or find the hotel? I know you have learned some French in the past three months, but last week we went to see that French movie, LaAuberge Espanol and we didn’t understand a word of French, either one of us. We were completely dependent on the subtitles. French was the only course I flunked in college. You, you are good at languages. You’ve been studying French everyday for three months. And you didn’t understand a word of the movie. I hate being so dependent and stupid. We will always be playing Blanche Dubois, dependent on the kindness of strangers, dependent dan les largesse d’etranger. Maybe I can remember a word or two and speak un peu, but I can’t comprend un mot of French they say to me.”They both tried to reassure me that being Blanche might be fun, but I wasn’t persuaded.The next day Marietta called me at work. “What’s the contractor’s number? I’m going to call him and give him a piece of my mind.”I gave her the number.She called back in a few minutes. “I really let him have it. I asked him if he had ever lived through a remodeling project living in the house while the work was going on around him. He said, ‘no.’ I told him it wasn’t easy and that my husband was getting depressed because of it and I won’t have that. He had better get those electricians and plumbers over there tomorrow.”And sure enough they came. The contractor claimed they had promised to come anyway, but they had been promising that for some time.Though I was not particularly happy about playing the role of the damsel in distress and giving up the white horse to Marietta, I was glad it worked. It was sort of like being stuck holding my wife’s purse and someone asks me to pay for the ice cream I just bought and I discover money in her purse.I knew why she called the contractor. She couldn’t do anything about my depression and fear that was attached to the trip, but she could do something about the contractor. And she was terrified about the return of me in the role of curmudgeon in France. This was a preemptive strike, a condom intended to prevent and unwanted birth. I appreciated her efforts, but my fears remained.Lessons Learned:

1. It is good to have a friend to talk with about a trip. They help you rehearse and prepare. They can also help you debrief and learn from your experience.
2. Having your mate recognize and respect your feelings means a lot. Even though this support will not eliminate those feelings, the support helps you feel less alone and more connected.

Chapter Twenty-six: DepartureOn the day of our departure there were moments of silly panic. “Where are the travelers checks? I put them right here on top. Why did you mess with my packing?” or “A friend told me that they hate Americans in Marseille. They rob you and steal your car if its parked in one place for more than thirty minutes. Change our reservations now. We can’t go to Marseille.”We made it to the airport without much arguing. I began missing my dog, Greco, before we ever left. The roof still leaked and the roofer was supposed to come that day. But we left, so we weren’t going to know if he came or not.My father’s ghost hangs over me as I think about this trip. He was always threatened by foreign travel. As a college boy I proposed a summer trip to Europe. My mother enthusiastically supported the notion. But the money had to come from my father and it never came. He was a conservative southern lawyer, afraid of the evil communists. I was a liberal college student and he was afraid I would get behind the iron curtain and never return.When he and my mother traveled abroad he was the epitome of curmudgeonhood. I could feel his fear in me. I love being the “go to guy” for people who need my “expert” help. I love being the master of my world, and in my office I feel that way sometimes. I am dependent on my patient’s dependency just as my father was dependent on his role as a prominent attorney in a small southern town. Pull us from these roots and fear emerges.I was optimistic that confessing my fears outloud, traveling business class and jet lag pills might have spared me my father’s fear. Once at the airport, however, it found me again. Marietta and I were sitting at the gate. “When do we take the jet lag pills and what are the directions?” I asked.“I forget them. I think I left them in my purse,” she replied.I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was after all Marietta Shipley. Forgetting something, usually many things on a trip is part of her definition of self. She had already confessed to forgetting the film camera (she remembered the digital one) and her sunglasses. Those things didn’t bother me but the jet lag pills. Jet lag was the reason we were going to France for three and a half weeks. It cost a lot of money and energy from jet lag to get there so we should make the best of it. I was hoping these jet lag herbal pills would lessen that physical cost and help us to recover more quickly from the trip. I was counting on it. Those jet lag pills were going to be my magic potion.“You forgot the jet lag pills? How could you forget those,” I said knowing perfectly well how she forgot them. Just like she forgets her purse in a restaurant, every other time we go out to eat. Just like she forgets to bring home the cups she takes with her in the car every morning to drink her coffee, etc. That’s how she forgot.“I’ve got some herbal pills that my Chinese acupuncture doctor gave me,” was her reply.I don’t want to record the rest of my tantrum. Suffice it to say my father’s spirit lived. This crisis resolved itself when Marietta found the jet lag pills in a store in the St. Louis airport.Hooray for Marietta!The final essential ingredient that I was depending on for a successful trip was business class. For two years we spent money on the Citibank American Airlines credit card and we saved all our American frequent flier miles. Remodeling our house with the bank’s money and our credit cards as the intermediary helped. So we had enough miles to go to France in business class, my first time to fly business class.As soon as I sat in my seat I felt better. The seat was wide and the room in front between seats seemed enormous by my Southwest Airlines standards. Just after we sat down a stewardess offered us a choice of champagne or orange juice. Marietta and I took the orange juice. With the orange juice we took our first of six jet lag pills. As soon as all passengers were in their seats our server returned with four choices of wine and soft drinks. Marietta got a glass of French Bordeaux. I got a Sprite remembering that alcohol was not good for jet lag.It was hard to avoid the alcohol though. I took a sip of Marietta’s wine. It was exceptionally good and the server returned several times with an offer to top off her glass.Then there was dinner. The choices were Filet Mignon with roasted red peppers and basil sauce with a potato tort bonded by Manchego cheese and tomato with green beans and sliced caramelized onions; Lamb Chops with light oregano red wine jus, the same green beans and onions the same potato tort; Chicken Manchego presented on a bed of basmati rice, artichoke and wilted spinach, with the red pepper sauce that came with the roast beef; Cannelloni filled with cheese and spinach in a light cream tomato sauce. This course was followed by a cheese course of red Leicester cheese and Roquefort cheese with haute cuisine crackers, port and other wines. The dessert was a choice among vanilla ice cream with or without hot fudge or nuts, or butterscotch or seasonal berries or Grand Marnier fruit salad with Hagen-Daz Mango Sorbet.These choices were “designed for your liking” by a panel of famous chefs. The only one we recognized was Alice Waters of Berkeley California’s Chez Paniesse. The wine consultant was Dr. Richard Vine. This seemed appropriate.The service was excellent, but with so much planning, consultation and hype the food should have been better. The meat tasted over cooked to us and the vegetables undercooked. The wine was better. Maybe they were hoping we would get drunk and forget the bad food.The main event to business class for us was the extra attention paid to us by the stewards and stewardesses. We were offered the opportunity to purchase from an on board duty-free shop. We were offered our own DVD player with selection of movies. I chose to attempt sleep. Marietta watched the movie offered on the large screen in the front of the plane.What I had once thought to be an extra comfortable large seat suddenly became a very inadequate bed. On the floor in a plastic bag was a fine comfortable pillow and blanket. The chair extended further than normal. The seat had a lumbar support, but I couldn’t lie prone. My body kept sliding into an uncomfortable puddle. I used the blanket for cover and the pillow to put in the middle to level the chair. My back lost all support as soon as I turned to one side or another. It was 7:30 P.M., CST, my Nashville, TN time. It was 1:30 A.M. London time. I wanted to be sleepy but I wasn’t. I was patient. In time I began to relax.The plane was full. In our section of this Boeing 767 the seating was arranged so that there were two seats together separated from two middle seats by aisles. The plane held 226 people. Our section held thirty-six of them, six rows, six people in a row. We sat in row four on the right side of the plane, the south side as we traveled east toward London. In the middle of our row sat a seventy-ish year old couple who choose DVD’s and a selection of movies. The husband obviously chose a comedy, because as I began to relax into a semi-trance, almost asleep, he would guffaw and I would be forced to begin my meditative journey toward sleep again.  I think he watched two movies, both comedies. Finally he became quiet about 10:00 PM CST. Sleep did come to me, but only for a couple of hours.I was awakened at about 6:30 A.M. London time and 1:30 A.M. C.S.T. by the servers organizing our breakfast. It consisted of a bowl of milk and cornflakes, ten blueberries and a half of an apricot, a small Dannon strawberry yogurt, a choice of an English muffin or a croissant, a choice of orange juice or apple juice and a choice of coffee or tea.I grudgingly pushed myself out of my sleep and ate my breakfast and of course took my last jet lag pill. Perhaps it was the placebo effect of the pill, but I did seem to be alert enough to face the next stage of the journey.We exited the ship that gave us safe passage and special treatment and merged in the masses of travelers losing whatever protection business class once provided. This is what I’m most afraid of, being nobody in a foreign land of long lines. We walked the airport maze until we found the next queue. This was for security. It had all the same machines we were familiar with in American airports. They stopped our carry-on bag. They took out Marietta’s cuticle clippers. “These are my good ones,” Marietta exclaimed. The offered to ship them back to the states for 5 pounds (or eight dollars). Marietta accepted their offer. This meant we had to wait for a supervisor and fill out some forms.I was so pleased when I answered Marietta’s question, “Do you mind?” with “no I don’t.”And I meant that. I felt this meant I was doing well at moving beyond curmudgeondom. We had three hours to kill here. We might as well spend some moments with the supervisor filling out forms. It wasn’t bad. It took maybe fifteen minutes. We then continued our walk through the maze of hallways looking for signs that said connecting flights next to an arrow that pointed the way. With a long walk and a bus ride to the North Terminal we emerged into the domestic terminal at Gatwick Airport.Of course, we knew no one there. No one knew us. We were hoping to blend into the crowd, to avoid looking American and slip past whatever anti-American feeling there was in Europe. We waited two hours in the main airport shopping area until our flight was called. Then we went to our gate and boarded our plane to Marseille.I’m not sure we accomplished our goal of looking European. I thought I could distinguish among the various nationalities. I don’t know what my cues were. The English men seemed to be wearing sport coats. Americans wore baseball hats. The young French males wore long sleeve cotton knit shirts without a collar. American’s clothes had more color. Young American girls wore pink. The further east in the U.S. the darker the color. Older English women’s hair was blond and held tightly in place with hairspray. The French women wore long sleeve white blouses with buttons. They were similar to a man’s dress shirt, but much less ironed. The French men tended to have longer hair. French women often wore long over blouses, either tan or olive green. The twenty something British woman wore a white blouse with a pointed collar underneath a long loose knit black v-necked sweater. An oriental man wore a well-ironed white cotton short sleeve dress shirt with the bright red and gold logo of his golf course in Japan. A young woman with long dark hair and a cotton knit off the shoulder blouse looked Italian. These guesses are a Rorschach card into my prejudices and stereotypes. I’m not sure how accurate my assumptions were, but we were among this polyglot of travelers and we were falling deep into the glot.Renting a car was no problem. Well not exactly. The machinery for renting a car was no different than in the airports in the U.S. The rental agent disturbed us when he gave us a list of do’s and don’ts composed especially for Marseille. Don’t park on the street. Do lock the car. Drive with the car doors locked. Car thieves will open your door at a stoplight, force you out of your car and steal it if your door is not locked. Park in supervised parking areas. Do not leave baggage and purses visible in your car seat or floor. Thieves will break windows to steal whatever they see in your car. The agents verbal instructions were, “I don’t mean to frighten you, but drive straight to the hotel and take the bags out of the car first thing and you will be all right.”We got a Renault Scenic, four doors with a hatch back, a small version of the Nissan Minivan. We followed the directions into Marseille from the airport. It was about thirty miles away. There were many opportunities to make wrong turns, but with luck and Marietta’s excellent instincts and navigation we made it to the city.Once downtown the torture began. The streets were poorly marked. We made several wrong turns. As we were recovering from one of those wrong turns we followed a car that we thought was making a U-turn across an opening across a large median. But it wasn’t a median. It was a parking lot with only one exit, the one we came in. We found ourselves boxed in at the bottom of the lot with nothing to do but back up.That was the problem. The car was a stick-shift five speed. The reverse was left and up with a line under the R. I pushed the gear shirt over as far as I could to the left then up and the car went forward. A flower stand was on our right, cars were parked on the left, straight ahead were steel posts that formed a barrier that was wide enough to let people walk between them, but not wide enough for a car to pass.I pulled up the hand brake so that I wouldn’t go further forward and began my experiments to discover reverse. I pushed pulled, jerked, shoved, yelled at the gear shift. Did the same in the opposite direction thinking that the diagram was reversed or upside down. All this and the same result – no reverse, only forward. Marietta tried. She also failed. Stuck and lost with the people about becoming curious. Angry, frustrated, and frightened we began to consider leaving the car when Marietta discovered two steel posts in front of us on the left just wide-enough apart for us to try to get through. I slowly let the car drift downhill toward the two posts on the left. My angle was bad. I waited for the constant flow of the cars in the street to stop before I began my attempt. Just as the cars stopped for the red light pedestrians began to move between my designated posts. One was a woman walking very slowly with crutches. I waited. It was frustrating. I was afraid that as soon as she was safely across the car traffic flow would begin again and my escape opportunity would be terminated. Marietta was too. She jumped out of the car and ran into harms way. She put out her hand and stopped the traffic. I squeezed the car through the opening. The steel posts on the left nicked the left rear door. (I was glad I maxed out our insurance coverage.) I didn’t have enough room to turn onto the street. My car edged on to the opposite sidewalk. Marietta jumped back in the car. We were off again, lost but not stuck.We found the hotel by accident.  We drove in front and parked. As I began gathering my wallet from the dash my sunglasses fell off my face to the floor. I leaned down to pick up them up and discovered a plastic ring below the gearshift knob. I pulled and it went up. That was the key to reverse. Pull up the plastic ring below the gearshift knob, and then shift into reverse. I was so excited to discover this that I tried it out three times and went backwards in reverse one foot each time. I had never been so happy to go backwards.We checked in, unpacked, took a shower, dressed and went out to explore and find a restaurant for dinner. I remember little about that meal except that Marietta ogled the waiters. We were in bed by 10:00 P.M.Though neither of us complained of jet lag, we slept that first night from 10:00 P.M. – 1:30 P.M. That’s fifteen and a half hours. The length of sleep was one thing, but the depth of sleep was another. The maid knocked on our door four times that I remember. The first I was so deep asleep I couldn’t even speak. The same was true for the second time. The third time I did make a noise of protest. The fourth time she was so exasperated with us that she came in inspite of our meager protests, cleaned the bathroom and changed the towels while we slept on.When finally we did slowly, one foot then thirty seconds later a second foot, roll out of bed we were so stiff we could barely move. I did my full yoga routine and my back still hurt. Marietta, who hates to stretch, did some leg stretches as well to no avail.We were dressed and on our way looking for lunch by 2:45. Marseille has a beautiful dock area surrounded by restaurants and that’s where we headed. We chose a restaurant on a corner sat down and I used the magic French words that Marietta taught me, “Je voudrais.” In French I ordered a coke for me and a Perrier “avec” lemon for Marietta and I “je voudraied” the menu. I got a Pepsi, Marietta go her Perrier, but no menu. It was past two and the kitchen would not open again until 6:00 P.M.We drank up, paid up and found Le Sufferin, another outdoor restaurant two spots down to the left. Le Sufferin advertised full service til after midnight. We found a table. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, Marietta a ham and cheese sandwich. My omelet was very light and good and Marietta’s sandwich was a notch above the American ham and cheese. The cheese was on the outside of the bread; the bread was toasted and better bread than Bunny Bread.When in Marseille we merged into the crowds, as I had feared. The specter of losing one’s identity with so little competence to negotiate our way was worse than the actual pain of it. As we walked along the streets we were obviously tourists. We had a map and were constantly referring to it, looking around for street signs and arguing over where we were. This made us an easy mark for thieves, we were told, but we were perdue (lost) what else could we do. We weren’t the only tourists, however. The other tourists were usually English or German. We were some of the few Americans.Anyway back to merging with the masses. I knew I had crossed an importantthreshold when on our last morning in Marseille we sat by the dock in an outdoor restaurant and had petit dejeuner (or breakfast). As we ate our croissants and jam we were completely inconspicuous and we could observe and comment on fellow restaurant patrons and the hundreds of passersby on the street, which we did. There was the man drinking a beer at 9:30 AM. His shirt was unbuttoned. He was short of breath and he was smoking. We wondered if he was long for this world. There were two young women parking their motor scooter. They had tattoos on their left shoulder. One had a nose ring. They were soon to become our servers.Marietta seemed to be the one fascinated with the opposite sex this trip. There was the Hertz Rental Car attendant, “Movie star handsome.”“Oh,” I said. That’s all I said.“Tall, dark, jet black hair parted in the middle, thin with muscles.”Then there were the waiters at the restaurant.“Oh, isn’t he good looking. They are all good looking.”“Who are you talking about?” I wondered.“The waiters. That one in the crew neck knit shirt, he is short, but so well built. He looks like a dancer. Gene Kelly in a tight t-shirt. No, Tom Cruise. And the others are just as handsome.”“His shirt is not that tight,” I commented defending his decorum.Then on the street the next morning, “Look at him, Jack Lalane. That old guy in the muscle shirt. What a flat stomach. David, I hope you look that good at seventy-five.”“How do you know he is seventy-five?” I asked.“His body was twenty five,” she responded, “but his face, balding head and gray hair and hands, they were old.”“You really checked him out,” I said.“It was that tight shirt, big muscles and flat stomach that caught my attention first.”Chapter Twenty-seven: Hotel De VilleThere were the tour buses full of people. We wondered if they were going to the Hotel De Ville, like us or were they going to a play or the Tour de France or were they going on a cruise. Speculating about the destination of passers-by was a fun pastime and was only possibly because we were not in our roles in Nashville where at restaurants attorney’s would discover and fawn over Marietta and my clients would see me or me them and neither of us know the etiquette of what to do. Here we were nobody, creating stories and speculating about what we could not possible know. Here that was almost everything.We decided to explore the waterfront. We used the signs for the Hotel de Ville as our reference point. These signs were everywhere. The guidebooks told us that the Hotel de Ville was a famous historical building. It was one of only three spared when the Nazis destroyed all the buildings in a several block area because that area then was a haven for Jews and the French resistance fighters.As we meandered toward this famous building we took several detours to look at one thing or another. We were surprised when we came upon a sign announcing that we had finally arrived at this famous landmark, “Hotel de Ville”. We assumed that it was a large hotel or museum. If it was a hotel we thought we might have something to drink there. If it were a museum we would take a tour of its exhibits.A gendarme stood at the front door. He greeted us in English, “What business do you have here?” he asked.“We want to see inside the hotel?”“Oh no you do not,” he said. “This is a prison. You do not want to go in because if you do, it will be to go to jail.”He explained that Hotel de Ville simply meant the city hall. This designation was given to municipal centers all over France. This Hotel de Ville housed the police, the city officials as well as the jail.As I imagined it is awkward trying to communicate without knowing the language. When I parked in the hotel garage in Marseille I lost the ticket that stuck out like a tongue when I pushed the red button as I entered the garage. The hotel concierge called the garage attendant as we were leaving to tell him to let us out. As I listened to this conversation I heard him say, “parlez englais.” I said to him “deux jours” so that we would be charged for only our 2-day stay. He replied, “un juor” or one day. Clearly telling me to lie so I will have to pay less.I remembered “perdue” or lost and “billet” for ticket. So I thought maybe I could swing it. We found our car and headed for the sortie (exit). When we got to the exit point with three exit gates, a man motioned us to a particular gate. I shouted, “perdue billet.” He came over and said something, actually a lot of something. He motioned me out of the car. I asked Marietta if she would negotiate the ticket problem while I stayed with our car full of luggage. I had forgotten to tell her about the “un jour.” Shortly she returned.“He told me to say twelve hours,” she said. “I told him we were her for two days, but he said twelve hours. He talked to his boss. He said twelve hours. That saved us twelve dollars to say 12 hours instead of 2 days. I offered him a tip of two Euros. He seemed insulted. I didn’t mean to insult him. He told me that in France this was ‘pas necessaire.’ But he took the two Euros.”Later after we joined Christian and Isabelle, Christian explained, “the French consider work as a privilege. Service workers are well paid. Tips are not expected in restaurants. The welfare system in France is so good that work is done as a matter of pride as much as for money. Peut être, it was an insult to offer this man a tip.”Not only did we not understand the language we couldn’t understand the difference between when we were being generous and when we were being insulting.We left Marseille and found ourselves on the correct A-road toward Avignon. In France the A-roads are their interstates. N-roads are very good highways. D-roads are the smaller less traveled roads that are often not on the map. We stayed on the A-road for only as long as we had to, because Isabelle suggested a “route more scenic would be to exit the A-roads and move forward on the N-roads.” The A-roads we took at 12:00 noon on July 12 was not very crowded. The rental car had an engine instead of the one with a rubberband for an engine that I had last time I traveled in Europe. I drove about 120 km per hour which I guessed was about 70 mph and I was going just a bit faster than the traffic in the right lanes, but I was often passed by cars going faster. These highways didn’t have the race car feel of the Italian autostrada.We exited to go to Gorda, a diversion recommended by Isabelle. The road was a winding N-road taking us through a dry countryside reminiscent of Southern California. The drive was beautiful. Gorda was a small ancient village built on the edges and sides of a U-shaped canyon with a gorgeous view of the surrounding territory. It was difficult to imagine why people would decide to build on the edge and sides of a cliff. This town was laid out using the walls of cliffs as the backs of buildings and the cliff ledges for roofs, much as the Mesa Verde Navajo Indian cliff dwellings were designed.As we drove around a curve we spotted an outdoor restaurant hanging on the edge of a cliff. We stopped there. It was an exclusive hotel. The brochure from the hotel indicated that it cost about three hundred dollars a night to stay there.The server sat us under an umbrella at a table that overlooked the canyon. The view was grand. The sky was a deep blue with only a few puffs as clouds. The menu had two sections. One called entrée and other termed “la Plate.” The entrées were melons and prosciutto and various appetizer looking items. Le Plate contained dishes that looked more like a meal. We decided to order one entree and one la Plat to split. We ordered melon and prosciutto and duck rare and “mashes pomme de terre” (mashed potatoes). As soon as our entree arrived we knew something was lost in translation. We got two melons and prosciutto that were plenty of food for a lunch. We knew that meant we were getting two la Plats as well. “Garcon,” I spoke as soon as I realized this, surprising Marietta with my confidence. The server came over and understood my English and hand motions for splitting and soon brought us each a half serving of duck and mashed potatoes. The rare duck was “delcieux” in a cherry sauce with a small mound of cooked tarte yet sweet cherries. The mashed potatoes were light clouds of whipped potatoes seasoned with just the right amount of salt. We ordered a boutille de l’eau (bottle of water). We got an elegant bottle with about sixteen ounces of water. We ordered another one not really understanding that each bottle was 6.50E and that the tap water, which they are obligated to bring us if asked, would have been fine. Our lunch was pleasant, the view was beautiful but paying 13.00E for Wattwiller water in an elegant bottle took away from the experience. Since the bottle was “so lovely” according to Marietta, we took it with us. We had surely paid for it.We drove on to our destination, Isabelle and Christian at un villa in Buis le Baronnies.Chapter Twenty-eight: Dans le CompagneThe drive included many D-roads and several wrong turns with fairly quick recovery, only a modicum of loud voices in our conversations. The scenery was beautiful as Isabelle foretold, but we hadn’t seen any lavender fields as she had promised.We arrived at our villa at about 4:30 PM. We greeted Isabelle and Christian with one kiss on each cheek. They are Parisians and Peter Mayle in his book A Year in Provence said that in Paris the greeting is one kiss on each cheek. The Southern French sometimes kiss as much as three times per cheek according to Peter. Our villa was one half of a duplex, one story with a loft. We had our choice of a downstairs bedroom and bath or an upstairs bedroom and bath. We choose upstairs. We put our bags in our room and were off to meet Charlotte and her friends who by chance were staying in the same village for vacation in a house nearby. Charlotte is the now twenty-year-old college student in Reims. She will study in Boston for a year and a half at Northeastern University in an exchange program with Cesem, the University in Reims.It seems Charlotte has a boyfriend, Vincent, with whom she is living (as of last month); Vincent’s best friend from childhood is Guilliame, who is dating Delphine. Delphine’s mother lives in Buis le Baronnies. Her mother is the only nurse at the local hospital. She is divorced and dating a neighbor. We were invited for a drink and someHors d’oeuvre.As we arrived at Delphine’s mother’s Charlotte came out to meet us. There had been a wreck on the A-road from Paris. The road had been closed for hours. The Tour de France was traveling through Lyon. Charlotte’s party had to travel all night. They arrived at 8:00 A.M. and slept until 5:00 P.M. by the swimming pool in the yard.Charlotte and her parents were clearly glad to see one another. And we were glad to see Charlotte again. Ah Charlotte, the beautiful talented sixteen year old who sang, The Rose, accopela for us four years prior, was even more beautiful than before. Her eyes were bright, alive, and happy. Her enthusiastic spirit was the same as it was with a dash of maturity and sophistication added.I was smitten once again. Who was this Vincent I wondered in my Archie Bunker uncle protective assumed role. I can only imagine Christian’s struggle to let his daughter go.We were introduced to Vincent, Guilliame, Delphine, Delphine’s mother, Michline, and boyfriend, Jean Pierre, two other girls Charlotte’s age and one other boyfriend. Charlotte, after greeting her parents, left them to tend to us while her parents began the political diplomacy of being parents of a courting young woman. Charlotte sat with us at the end of a long table on the porch. Fourteen people somehow had seats at this picnic table. Charlotte interpreted for us. We caught up with Charlotte. The conversation around us was French. Marietta was able to be a part of the French conversation. I was completely lost unless someone was speaking English.The house was small. I’m not sure how all these people could sleep inside. In fact I imagined that some slept outside. The swimming pool was about twenty by ten with the water streaming out of one end and pouring over the end as if it flowed from the pool down the mountain. It was framed on three sides by a stone walk. On the unframed end the water poured into a collection area below. This allowed for leaves to flow out of the pool and made the pool easier to clean and pumped the water constantly through a filter system.The visit with Charlotte was much too short. One thing of note was Vincent and Guilliame’s apologetic comment for one of the girls we met who had purple and pink spiked hair and various piercings and tattoos. Imagining how she must look to us they described her as “une victime de la mode”… In English this means fashion victim. In contrast to her these young people had no piercings, no tattoos and their hair was natural and conventionally cut.We drove from there to a local restaurant where we had a beautifully presented and deliceaux dinner. I had something akin to chicken that was not chicken, not quail, not pheasant, and not duck. I know because I asked. Marietta and Isabelle had a fish that turned out to be trout served and deboned at the table by two beautiful charming waitresses, supervised by the hostess owner and chef who we imagined to be the mother of one of them.Exhausted we returned home about 11:00 PM to our bedroom, our stifling hot, no breeze at all bedroom. I had enough alcohol to drink that I feel asleep in a drunken stupor. Marietta was not so lucky. I woke in a couple of hours in a sweat, unable to return to sleep. With the help of Benadryl I finally found sleep again. A breeze came at about 6:00 AM. We slept until 10:00 A.M.Near Buis in Nyons there is a local legend about the breeze (le ventre) in this area. It always blows the same time daily. In 600 AD St. Césani d’ Arleo came to visit his cloistered nun sister (souer) in her convent de Saint Pierre. The heat was so stifling that her brother (son frere) went to the south coast of France to the Mediterranean Sea and brought back with him the breeze from the sea. He put it inside the ground near her convent. Everyday in the summer the wind pours out of the hole “se trou de Pantois” at 10:00 P.M. until morning. In the winter it blows from six in the morning until 9:00 A.M.At breakfast (or petit dejeuner) we lingered over our yogurt, bread, jam and coffee talking for more than an hour. Christian told us what his father told him, (and he perhaps was told this by his father). That is “you never get older sitting at the dinner table.” Comment dir on: “on ne vicillit pas ā table.” Obviously Christian thought this to be an important legacy from his father.The weather reports kept getting worse. When we arrived this was the hottest period on record in France since 1976. Now Christian tells us that reports are that it is the hottest, driest, period on record, period.Coming from the U. S. we are aware of having the coolest and wettest spring in a long time. Summer which usually comes in late May for us in Tennessee did not really come until July 1^st. It occurred to us that we had been somehow stealing their normal weather.After eating our long petit dijuener we lounged about the house, staying in the shade shutting the windows exposed to the direct sun, happy for the breeze that blew through the house, blowing around papers and napkins. The breeze made the heat just bearable.Chapter Twenty-nine: The Quest for LavenderLate in the day Isabelle proposed a ride in our window shut air-conditioned rental car to search for lavender fields. Christian decided to stay behind. He had two weeks of theLe Monde and some left over magazines that he wanted to read. “I enjoy reading Le Monde,” he said. “It presents material with the pro’s and cons around each issue. When reporting this way it does not comment. When it does it often offers an opposing view as well. I like to read it and form my own opinion and I get the fact news from TV.”Just then on television came a news report about the high unemployment figures in the U.S. and how difficult it was for U.S. citizens in need to get food. The program showed charitable organizations handing out food and running out of fresh vegetables.Christian said, “The French press likes to demonstrate the failures of your social net and implicitly contrast the success of the French system. And I agree. Perhaps our system is too indulgent and rewards not working, while yours is too indifferent to the poor. The poor will hate the rich if not taken care of. That is one of the reasons for the difference in the murder rate of our two countries. I agree that work is a privilege and it is my responsibility to help take care of those who don’t work. I just think we need to tinker with the level of tax and the amount of help a bit better in France.”Clearly the news and public events were important to Christian. He took his citizenship very seriously, was happy with France’s position on the war in Iraq, wishing to wait for the weapon’s inspectors to finish their job before war was considered, a position that I was sympathetic too as well.In France the Iraq war was a major issue along with genetic engineered foods. I saw a slogan on the back of T-shirt in Marseille that said, “America knows no limits,” written in English. Some French seem to believe that having limits and opponents to challenge one’s ideas is a good thing and that the attitude of the U.S. to go it alone is arrogant and imperious and will come back to bite us in the butt. Perhaps they have a point.Isabelle, Marietta and I left Christian and the news and piled into the hot car and were off on our lavender quest, the car air-conditioning cooling us down. Reports were that the heat and drought had impacted the flowers. The purple lavender’s weren’t so purple and the smell of lavender perfume in the fields was hardly detectable. We drove east from Buis le Baronnies up small mountains roads following a river into the bowels of the Baronnies. Soon we were spotting lavender fields. We saw a tractor working the lavender in the fields. I stopped the car. Marietta and Isabelle got out to take pictures. I was too comfortable in the car, too shy and too aware of how good Marietta and Isabelle would be as a team without me.I was correct. Two men emerged with rakes they used to gather the lavender cut by the tractor. Soon the man on the tractor stopped and was posing for a picture. The other two men were leaning on their rakes talking to Marietta and Isabelle. Marietta was doing her part inspite of her language handicap.In a about fifteen minutes they returned reporting that the temperature outside was cooling and implicitly telling of their ability to disarm the men, distract them from their work, getting them to tell them about their fields. One told them he could only stand being in Paris for a day. Looking around the mountains and the purple lavender fields one could understand why. The other offered to sell his fields and house to them and let them do the work.Hard work it had to be. The fields were half hard brown dirt and half rock. It was amazing that anything grew here. Even though this was a poor crop year I could not miss the beautiful purple haze in the field or the aroma of lavender when the tractor cut a fresh row.We returned to the house and Christian had begun to plan dinner. He brought out some shish kabobs of steak, peppers and onions. He cooked some spaghetti and opened a fresh bottle of red wine. We sat down to a meal that began with the main course. This was followed by a salad of greens dressed in balsamic vinegar and olive oil from this region. This was followed by a dessert of fromage (cheese), goat cheese, blue cheese, Camembert, pecorino and "apricot,” nectarines and figs I picked from the tree in front of the house.Chapter Thirty: CurmudgeondomAt dinner we discussed plans for Isabelle and Christian to visit us. Since Charlotte was coming to Boston as a student in January for eighteen months we hoped they would come to see her and us. Christian used this to begin his negotiation with Isabelle. “Since I agreed to vacation with you (Isabelle) for two weeks so far from Paris this year then perhaps next year you will relent after my fifteen years of suggesting, that we go to my mother’s home only an hour from Paris.I had never seen Isabelle respond so strongly. “Hah! Go with you to your mother’s where you will talk and joke with her. She will play the piano. You will read and work on your computer and who will go with me on a walk in the forest. I will have to go by myself, while you will be happy with your work and your mother. No. I won’t go. I must be at least 300 kilometers south of Paris for my summer vacation. I will go with you to your mother’s for the weekend, but not for my summer vacation.”Usually Isabelle defers to Christian but he had clearly found one of her limits. Her vacations were precious to her and she had a clear vision of what she needed.As her voice lowered she said, “I need a change from my work. I need to be in nature and go on walks and hikes. I want to be away from crowds and familiar places. I need this change. It restores my soul.”Marietta and I were quiet, but this fight was very familiar to us. We bought a condo in Park City, Utah on the agreement that we would pay for it in part by using it as our vacation destination for the extended future.That lasted from 1993 until 1999, when Marietta revolted with “I’m bored with Utah I want to go to Europe” thus our first trip to visit Christian and Isabelle. Marietta was just as clear and tenacious as Isabelle.I have an affinity for Christian. He is almost ten years younger than I. At forty-eight I was much like him. That was the year we bought our condo in Utah and I looked forward to vacationing every year in familiar territory. Each visit I hoped would allow us to sink further below the venir of the place, hoping to make friends there and perhaps create an identity for ourselves. We have made some inroads and have some Park City friends, but most of the time we go there I write and Marietta goes alone on explorations of the area.I think my late forties were the height of my curmudgeondom. One of the requirements for being a curmudgeon is being unaware of it and having a great many reasons for it. Honesty was one. “I’m just being truthful about how I feel. I don’t want to go.” But I was not really being truthful. I was afraid to go.I treated myself as if I were the master of the world. When I was most depressed I would use newspapers and magazines as tools to support my imaginary importance. It was as if I were President and my opinion could shape the world. Therefore I needed to be briefed. Television news, Newsweek, Time and the New York Times were brought to my door to inform me so that I could develop a considered opinion about the issue of the day. I did this because… I don’t know why I did this. Perhaps to feed my ego to think that the world needed me to know.All I know is that my depression was marked by my news addiction. As I got less depressed I required less news. When I was more depressed I seemed to consume more news. I don’t know if this is true for Christian, because he is an employee of the French government. What decisions the government makes may be part of his daily life. But this certainly isn’t my reason for getting caught up in the events of the day.Three things happened that helped me become aware of my curmudgeondom. One is my observation of the careers of colleagues in academe. They seemed to have career low points in their early fifties. This happens because of a confluence of a number of factors. A factor is one’s arrogance. At fifty you are near the height of your professional power. You are more likely to assume too much power at this point. Old mistakes begin to be exposed. Your flaws begin to show more easily. Another factor in this confluence is that this is the beginning of the time when the younger generation begins to assert itself. While you have been spending most of your adult life proving you are indispensable, they are showing you, perhaps for the first time, that you are not. Another factor in the confluence is the aging process. You become aware that you are not as strong physically or as quick mentally.This is different than the forties mid-life crisis. That was for me resignation to myself and my life. It had less to do with losing my professional cachet than with giving up my dreams. It was more internal and personal. This fifty’s event seems to me to have moments of painful professional attacks that hit me at a time when I am not sure about myself either.This, of course, is a humbling experience. For me these fifties humbling moments cast me back on to my dependence on Marietta for validation and confirmation. I have had two failed marriages. When Marietta burst into tears with Ellen and I at the restaurant before our 1999 trip and told me that she had hated our last trip to Europe and was dreading this next one, I was startled. Travel was one of those things we both proclaimed we would enjoy together when and if we retired. If Marietta didn’t want to travel with me, how far away might the end of us be?! I felt I had to do something about this. Thus, my quest to take on my complaining, and rigidity, which had given structure to my aging maleness. I knew I needed to find defenses that were less onerous on her. This was then the second factor after the humbling experiences of life in the fifties.But humility leads one to the third factor. It helped me become more open and more aware of the difficulties my character postures were creating for others. This openness and motivation to change led me to this writing and to working on this personal transformation.The power of the curmudgeon comes with editing and complaining about the plans of those around him. (I say “him” because men seem to be champions at this role though “her” can play the role as well). Nothing is a good idea to the curmudgeon, especially when it comes to him going or doing something. He is non-plused by everything. The only things that seem to interest him are his ideas. (Hence my writing on vacations. Hence my writing now.)The curmudgeon is correct to say that everywhere you go you are still there, but said in this context it means that your character flaws are still there for those you love to suffer through. Perhaps wherever you are people wish you weren’t and you are accepted only because people are forced to accept you.This is not necessarily a strange or bad thought for the curmudgeon. In fact being tolerated in spite of his ill humor is one way he proves he is loved or is powerful. If it is love, however it is a love only a mother could have.The phrase, “pretty places are like breasts; once you have seen one you have seen two,” not only is this an insult to femininity, it is an insult to pretty places and inadvertently to the speaker. It says that pretty places don’t have their unique qualities and that the speaker would not be able to recognize these qualities if he saw them.I must confess. Pretty places sometimes are like poems are to me. I often don’t get the point. They are sometimes wasted on me.Chapter Thirty-one: The FireThat night after dinner Marietta and I went for a walk to the village. We had some ice cream that wasn’t very good and then we walked back. We heard sirens. As we climbed the hill toward home, we saw a red glow and smoke rising from the town below. The neighbors were out. They had explained to Christian and Isabelle that the fire was the lavender plant at the edge of town. Lavender is processed in many ways. One of them is to press the dry lavender for its oil.The fire must have been fed by the lavender oil. The flames leapt spectacularly above the trees, high above the skyline of other buildings and trees. The firemen seemed feeble in their attempts to contain it. (We heard the next day that water was usually pumped from the river to fight fires, but the river was so low that it didn’t have enough water to feed the water pumps.)Car lights were popping on all over the city and heading for high ground for a better view of the fire. Several came to a parking place just below us. We watched the fire, the firemen trying to contain it, fire trucks blinking lights and the police directing traffic.The next day the fire was still smoldering. Speculation was rife about town. This was the poorest year for a lavender crop in this region in memory. The fire occurred on July 14, French Independence Day or Bastille Day, right across from a gas station. It would be almost impossible to tell how it started. There was a fire in the same factory fifteen years earlier. Now in this town of 2000 locals, more than twenty jobs would be lost.After exploring the countryside some more in our air-conditioned car we returned by way of the restaurant Auburge de Malquery. The tables in this restaurant sat under a grove of Tilleul trees. These trees have a blossom that is harvested in June that makes tea. There is a special honey (or miel) that bees make from these flowers, that has a unique taste that reminded me of cream and sugar. It left a particular aftertaste similar to Echinacea. We made reservations and went home.We napped a while then leisurely walked to the restaurant from our villa at about 9:15 P.M. We arrived late for our 9:00 reservation. (I should mention that here 9:00 P.M. was 2100 houres in France. Keeping military times creates a different image of the day as time creeps toward 2400 houres.) Though we were thirty minutes late there were plenty of choices for a table. We found one next to one of the ten large Tilleul trees in this grove.The owner seated us and chatted with us about the fire. Isabelle was impertinent enough to ask his if the fire was the result of arson. He didn’t know. She wondered if the fire fifteen years ago had been purposely started. He didn’t know. Did they collect insurance? He thought so. Is there insurance this time? He expected so. What will happen to the workers? He didn’t know. Isabelle complained about the heat. He concurred it was the worst in years and that May and June were more reliably pleasant months in Provence. Isabelle told him about the legend of le vent de Pantois and the wind reliably coming out of a hole in the ground each day at a certain time.He told us the legend of the creek that ran in front of the restaurant. It was the reason for the name of his restaurant. Auberge is an old name of a place to stop with one’s horse and have a good meal. Malguery is the word for fully cured. It seems that Buis le Baronnies was known for its medical care. People would come from all around to the hospital on this creek. When they crossed the creek to leave they were fully cured, hence Malguery.The food we ate was exquisite, Marietta had rare duck breast with well done ratatouille and green beans wrapped in bacon. The rest of us had a delicate white fish with the same vegetables. The local red wine Syrah Barron le Frais, 2001. It was meant to be consumed shortly after if was bottled. It was fresh and light, easy on the tongue.Chapter Thirty-two: The Old and the Farht DanceThe local July 14 celebration was in full swing just outside the restaurant in a small plaza. A band played rock and roll music that was a mixture of American 70’s and 80’s music and French rock tunes that we weren’t familiar with. One tune was a French adaptation of This Land is Your Land, a sixties Pete Seeger tune. We joined Charlotte, Jean Pierre, Michline, Vincent, Delphine and Guilaime at a table.Marietta gamely tried to engage Jean Pierre in conversation. He gamely tried to respond until finally he insisted that Michline change seats with him and she tried to communicate with Marietta above the noise of the band.For a curmudgeon this presented only an opportunity to flee. Christian found one when Charlotte needed him to write a prescription. Me, I was stuck. All ages were represented at the party. And old man on a respirator was there with his wife and a beer. Young children bounced up and down in front of the band. Adolescents waved their arms and sang with the music. Mature couples, who had rehearsed dance steps, danced as well.One eighteen-year-old boy in particular caught my attention. He was the opposite of curmudgeon. He seemed to celebrate every beat of the music with his body. Sometimes he had a pretty girl as a partner and sometimes not. His movements were fluid and graceful. His face beamed with delight.Part of me wanted to be him and part of me wanted to go home ASAP. Clearly letting the music possess you was an antidote to curmudgeondom. But do you know how silly it would look for me or me and Marietta to be lost in the music on the dance floor.I thought I would give it a try. Of course Marietta was game. So we two old farhts began to shuffle about on the dance floor. I began to let the music have me and move with the flow of the beat. We were doing all right until Marietta decided she wanted to lead.Ladies if you want to discourage a man from emerging from his curmudgeon defenses insist on leading and dancing the dance you want to dance instead of one that he is comfortable with. Your man will close down like a morning glory when the sun sets. Or anyway I will. And did. When Marietta broke rank from me I felt lost and abandoned. I could only see the old and the farht in us dancing and all beliefs of poise and grace left my head.Anyway, I think I did learn another lesson in fighting my curmudgeon impulses. Let the music take you or let the spirit of the setting and the people influence you. This is what performers invite you to do when they use the words “give it up for…” in cajoling applause from a crowd. Give up your defenses and let the spirit move you. See the giant rocks pushing out of the top of the mountain creating a hogs back. There it is right in front of me as a write this. Let the powerful imagery of rock pushing through the earth enter my heart and speak to me. “Break out of your curmudgeon shell,” they say to me.What is this coming out from under my curmudgeon shell? What is to be my new self? It has no form yet. I don’t know whether it will be an improvement, a better set of postures or another set of calcified defenses. I want to dance and I want to hide.My mind tells me that times like these are the best of times, but my stomach tells me I’m about to faint. Is this what it is like to allow the spirit to move you, to give it up and be influenced by my surroundings? Am I betraying the essence of who I am? Is this honest? Is this safe? Is this supposed to be fun?Chapter Thirty-three: Vaison de la RomanThe next day we got up, early for us, 8:30 A.M., and went to the Marché in Vaison de la Roman.  Marietta wanted to drive. In Vaison de la Roman I got grounded in my dislikes: the crowds, the slow walking and looking that hurt my back.  The toting was bad, but not as bad as the standing, walking slow and standing some more. I didn’t like enduring Marietta’s driving and her not knowing that she had to put the clutch in to start the car when the car was in gear. In her defense she got up the difficult driveway to our house very gracefully, better than I did. I confess it is hard for me to be a passenger.The Marché moved me and I was glad of that, but maybe in the wrong way.  I was tired and quiet on the way back. I wondered what I had missed about the Marché. For many people this teeming mass of entrepreneurial energy was fascinating. There were chickens with their feet attached, pigeons, crabs, fresh fish, vegetables, pesto and other sauces, spices in small sacks tied with string, cloth goods, racks of clothes, cheeses, meats especially sausages, melons and fruits, free tastes of everything.How could I not like this? Perhaps it is that I don’t have an agenda for going to the Marché like Isabelle and Marietta. These things are the raw materials for their production. Since I had just as soon go out to eat than bother to cook I don’t appreciate what the Marché offers. I feel like a servant, a beast of burden, a billfold. The enthusiasm and energy of this extraordinary Marché (according to Isabelle) did not enter my soul. I knew the problem was with me, but I didn’t know what it was. Putot mourir (my French for ‘I would rather die’) than go to the La Marché.At the Marché in Vaison le Roman we had tried to cash some of our travelers checks at a bank. “Non, no cash, pas cash depuis Euros.”“Where do we go?” I asked. Marietta translated “Ou est la place pour la change le cheque?”The bank teller responded, “Le Poste” (the post office). We were so pleased that we seemed to be negotiating our way so well.So that day we went to le Poste. It was closed, but that was d’acor (okay). We could go to the Poste tomorrow in Buis.After recovering from La Marché we had supper at home and traveled to Vaison la Roman again for a concert of Tango music and dance set in the ancient ruins of an outdoor Roman theatre. The theatre was exactly as you might imagine, rows of adjacent stones set in a semicircle moving upward along the side of a hill. There were still a few original columns set at the top of the theatre.Prior to the show fifteen or so people, dressed mostly in black, came on the stage and spread themselves out so they took up the whole stage. One of them held the microphone while another one held a written statement from which the man with the microphone read. The audience occasionally erupted in boos and opposing applause throughout the speech. Isabelle explained that this was a statement asserting their demands to the government that stage workers be considered artists and receive similar compensation from the government.The French President, Jacque Chirac, gave the French version of the state of the Nation address the previous day on July fourteenth. He was interviewed for two hours on French television. We watched for a time with Christian. During part of this interview he addressed the question concerning the stage technicians strike that caused the cancellation of many of the festivals in the South of France this year. He said that the country should and does support the intermittent artist. They earn their yearly income only two months a year, usually July and August. Chirac, according to Christian said that the artist is the vision and imagination that defines a country’s identity. Therefore the country must support them. The question to be decided is whether or not the stage support staff can get work other times of the year and who should be given the status of artist.It was hard for me to envision an American president acknowledging our country’s debt and dependence on our country’s arts community. I could not imagine such a debate in our country.The concert was excellent. The dancers were elegant some athletic, and some were older and danced a slower more seductive tango. One couple consisted of an old man at least seventy and a gorgeous young woman. When they came on stage the audience gasped in disgust, but as they danced a slow graceful and provocative tango, the audience warmed to their talent and poise. When they finished the audience broke out in an extraordinarily loud applause.The thought that we were sitting where people have sat for hundreds, over a thousand years, in these very seats was overwhelming to me, but more overwhelming was my back. It hurt. The seats were blocks of stones with no back support. During a particularly compelling part of the concert I would forget that my back hurt. The pain would come to the front of my brain again.  I would begin counting the numbers to try to figure out how much time was left. Then the dancers would come out and I would forget my discomfort. Then the pain would return. Oh my kingdom for a seat with a back.We returned home after midnight. The weather reports were that this was the night that a front would pass through. When we went to bed at 1:00 there was a small breeze typical of the preceding nights. Then about 4:00 AM the winds came and the windows and doors began banging in the house. The winds were so hard that they slowed down the electric fan we had borrowed from the landlord. I awoke and closed some of the banging windows and doors and secured the ones I left open. This wind was a version of what the Provence folk call le Mistral. They are straight line winds. This one had to be a fifty mile an hour wind. It seemed fierce to me, but we were assured later by Ms. Facchienrri that it was a mild version of “le mistral.”After I shut the windows upstairs I went back to sleep and dreamed Marietta and I were making love on the front porch of somebody else’s house. To get back to our car (the blue rental Renault we were driving in France) we had to walk through the house. We disturbed a dog and the man of the house who hostily stared at us. I feebly tried to offer an explanation. We escaped the house and got to the car. The scene in my dream changed. I was treating a couple. They were divorced and I was advising the man about how to get along with his difficult ex-wife for the sake of his children. The wife was a lesbian. I shifted tactics and began to wonder if he wanted to remarry his ex-wife. Clearly that was a bad idea, but so was divorce a bad idea.The night before I had another dream. It was set in my hometown Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Carla Ray my childhood next-door neighbor, a year my junior, was setting up a restaurant in a gym there. Two workers were building a floor in a raised part of the building. She was very pleased with their craftsmanship. I worried about how she might cool the gym. She pointed to the windows that rimmed the top of the gym and told me that the tall ceiling and the breeze from the windows would cool the building.Isabelle interpreted my two dreams the next day. In the first one set in Arkadelphia about my next-door neighbor, Carla Ray, Isabelle suggested that I was pleased with my new construction of my character. It was large well ventilated and the raised platform seemed to be well constructed. In the next dream I obviously felt exposed and embarrassed. I was wondering whether or not I could retreat back to my former self. Clearly that was not a good idea, but I had no clear sense of direction.Chapter Thirty-four: Failure of Je Ne Sais PasThe next day was dedicated to my return to curmudgeondom. Traveling according to Marietta and Isabelle is an antidote for this curmudgeon arrogance because there is so much one does not know.In the car on the way to the Vaison la Roman Marché Marietta and Isabelle introduced me to the damsel in distress routine. The conversation began focused on Christian, the one not present.“Why do you think Christian would rather work or read than come with us?” Isabelle asked.“He is like me,” I said. “He likes working with knowns rather than unknowns.”“Oh its that man not asking for directions thing,” Marietta said.“What does men and asking for directions have to do with this?” I asked.“Men have trouble not knowing and I don’t mind men knowing.” Marietta said. “I enjoy not knowing. But I hate it when men have to know and be right when it is clear they are wrong, that they don’t know and won’t admit it.”“So you think it’s a man/woman thing?” Isabelle asked. “Men, they are addicted to having the answer and women like the mystery and wonder.”“No, that’s probably too extreme.  I know plenty of women who know it all and plenty of men who are clueless. This is a human problem,” Marietta said.“Well I can’t deny that I feel that I must know all the answers,” I said. “I get panicked when I don’t. As a professional and an adult I’m supposed to know. I’m supposed to have the answers to my patient’s questions. I like knowing.“If I don’t know all the answers I take what facts I have, and weave them together with what I do know. I try to create an answer that I believe is right. Then I try out my answer with my clients, colleagues, and friends in hopes that they will buy my concoction. If they do, then my belief in the rightness of my answer is confirmed. It is hard for me to be the child who loves mystery and wonder, who knows they don’t know, but loves to imagine, play and pretend. I can’t seem to find the David who played in the ravine behind my Grandmother’s house.”“But,” Marietta rejoined. “You do still imagine, play, and pretend.  When you concoct an answer by combining disparate facts with your imagination into a theory, it is the same game of imagination you used to play.”I’m sure I looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.“It is the same thing you did in your grandmothers, how do you say, ravine, No?” Isabelle continued, “As a child, you knew you did not know it all. Now you pretend that basically you understand everything and you do not.”“But when I make up a theory that provides an answer,” I said. “I believe it.”“Yes,” Marietta said. “That’s the problem and that’s one of the reasons I insist on you going on trips. When you travel there is no way that you can know. Travel forces you into a mystery. You have no choice but to wonder in a foreign place.”“So I responded,” I asked. “You want me to go on a trip so that I will begin to admit I don’t know. Do you think you are going to break me down?”“No,” Isabelle said. “Marietta travels because she loves it. That has nothing to do with you. If she has any wish it is that she hopes that the two of you will have fun together. Perhaps she also hopes that travel will open you up to wonder, imagination, play, and to je ne sais pas. Men don’t seem to be able to say I don’t know.”“Well it does that sure enough,” I said. “Sometimes on this trip it felt more like terror than play. I have to acknowledge not-knowing most of the time on this trip.”They laughed. Marietta said, “And I know that just about killed you to admit that didn’t it? David you don’t really know how life works. No one does. You don’t understand reality. That’s a God thing. None of us are God. We are all really children. We still don’t know. You don’t really know where you are even in a familiar place.”“If only I had the courage to go to a familiar place and see it as a place I don’t know,” I said. “Then perhaps I could find my ravine again.”“Proust, wrote about a magic moment as an adult,” Isabelle began.“Oh you are talking about Swan’s Way and the scene where he ate the cookie,” I interrupted.“David, I’m amazed,” Isabelle said. “You know Proust. How did you know that? He’s French.”“Perhaps I read French,” I said.“David, please,” Marietta said rolling her eyes. “We listened to Swan’s Way in English as a book on tape. We listened to it one day while we were in the car traveling. When we got to the cookie part, we stopped it and played it again so that we would be sure to hear that famous piece of literature.”“So do you remember that part?” Isabelle asked.“Not really, what’s your point?” I wondered. (See, I can wonder some times).“Swan, Proust’s protagonist had just taken a bite of a Madeline cookie with a sip of a certain flavor tea and suddenly he was filled with an intense feeling of well being, of contentment, of home. He explored this sensation of eating the cookie and drinking the tea. The sensation became less powerful with each bite and each sip. As Swan reflected on this he was reminded of his beloved aunt who served him exactly this combination of tastes, a Madeline cookie with this particular flavor of tea. As he thought about her and her home he understood where the feeling was coming from. It was coming from his memory of being in her home, loved by her.”“So are you saying that this place I’m searching for is not just a place? It is a place inhabited by people who love me?" I asked.“Well, I am not sure, but I wonder if you aren’t looking for your grandmother in her ravine. Perhaps she was part of what made your ravine the place that you can’t seem to find anymore. Can you tell me about this place, your grandmother’s ravine.”“This is where I played with my cousins and our friends as a boy. It’s five acre woods seemed like a vast jungle to me. A small creek bubbled through its gorge. The creek was full of tadpoles and the underbrush contained a few harmless snakes and rabbits. But to me the ravine had lions, tigers, bobcats, wolves and leopards.  In the ravine a reddish clay mound rose fifteen feet above the creek to form what I believed was a cliff. The trees were mostly pine trees with a few cherry bark oak and sycamore mixed in. The trees were so straight and tall that they looked like giant strings with their leaves somehow glued to the clouds, their trunks floating down from the tree limbs and then unraveling into roots when they touched the ground. In the summer the cool breezes that blew up from the ravine to Grandmother’s house smelled of pine tar. To go into the ravine one had to have the courage of a superhero. The snakes I saw in the ravine were all rattlesnakes and the rabbits became wolves.“I played in the ravine with my cousins (David and Donnie Shaw, Tommy and Lee Elledge, and Randy McMillan) and our neighborhood friends Raboo Rodgers, Gary Guice and Bill Willbanks.“In the ravine we fought Indians. Being an Indian in these fights had its advantages. Indians got to run through the woods naked, jumping off the cliff while swinging on grapevines that sometimes held the weight of a ten year old boy and sometimes not. When not, there was usually one wet, muddy boy surrounded by other boys laughing. The disadvantage to being an Indian was that in the end, you had to die or give up to the cowboys. The cowboys in these adventures always won.“There were two entrances into the ravine. One was the heroic entrance that we used when we were all together on our bikes. We would race our bikes over to grandmother’s, stop them so that the bikes laid down and slid out from under us. We would hit the ground running down the path through the kudzu to the creek.  Perhaps our bikes would slam into the carport railing. These dents and paint scraps in the carport railing were forgiven by my grandmother without us even having to ask or having to know that we had sinned.“The second path was out grandmother’s front door, then left down the hedgerow that disappeared into the trees. This was the Alice in Wonderland entrance to the ravine. Somehow it was for quiet contemplative moments. On that path you found daffodils, dogwoods, crabapple bushes and a china berry tree.”“Have you ever gone back to the ravine to find what you are looking for?” Isabelle asked.“I have been to Arkadelphia to find that ravine,” I answered, “but I didn’t find it. Oh the five-acre wood was there, but it was only five acres, not a vast jungle. My grandparents are dead and their house has been bulldozed to the ground. The cliff I remembered is a fifteen-foot clay mound. There were no monsters, tigers or lions. There were no cousins and friends running through the ravine beckoning me to follow. The ravine I remember from my childhood is gone. It doesn’t exist.”“But David,” Marietta said. “You knew the ravine of lions, tigers and rattlesnakes never really existed in the way that you remember it.”“Oh yes it did.” I was surprised by the conviction with which I spoke. “It existed for me, David, Donnie, Lee, Tommy, Randy, Raboo, Gary and Bill.  They would tell you if they were here. It was a magic place for all of us. It was where we learned about sex, where we smoked our first cigarettes that we stole from my grandfather, where we learned about loyalty when Aunt Francis confronted all of us about the missing cigarettes.“It was where we learned about compassion, when Tommy finally broke and confessed under Aunt Francis’ (his mother’s) pressure. We met there in our circle in the deepest, thickest part of the ravine to decide Tommy’s punishment for ratting on us. And we decided that he didn’t need punishing that we couldn’t have lied to our mothers at his age either.That ravine of my childhood existed then, but it is gone for me now.”“But David,” Isabelle protested, “You invested that place with magic. It was never really what you believed it was.”“Perhaps you are right and perhaps you are wrong,” I said still with an element of defiance in my voice. “There is a Celtic legend that when people die their spirit becomes lodged in the things around those that they love. Their spirit could be in a tree, a rock, a tadpole, a rabbit or whatever. And when you look at the thing that contains the spirit of your deceased loved one and discover their spirit in that thing, then you set their spirit free. This legend encourages adults and children to invest all the things about them with magic and that is my problem. Wherever I go, I am there. I am an adult now, not a child. I have a great deal of difficulty seeing magic anywhere through my adult eyes.”“David,” Marietta said. “Why don’t you try putting magic into our trip? Why don’t you try enjoying not knowing and the wonder of being in a world you don’t understand? Isabelle and I don’t know and someone always comes to our rescue. Being a damsel in distress can be fun.”It was first on my agenda the next day to use the je ne sais pas strategy to see what would happen when I played the role of the damsel in distress. This posture seduces rescue. It connects you to others through their strength and compassion. It makes them feel good to help you and it makes you feel cared about when you are helped; at least this is Marietta’s and Isabelle’s theory. Not knowing can be a good place to be. This day will test that theory.First thing I wanted to do that day was cash my travelers checks. I went down to the village center, found the Poste, waited in line, presented my checks. They understood me and I understood them. This was not the place. ‘La banque.’ So I went to the bank. Again in a combination of French and English I understood them and they me. “Did I have an account there?” “No.” “Sorry we don’t cash these checks.” My “je ne sais pas,” distressed damsel routine was wearing thin, but I thought I would go the Office of Tourisme. Surely they would tell me what to do. They did. Go to Caisse de Campagne. It has a red sign. I did. I found it. No they did not cash travelers checks. Go to a bigger city, maybe there.I was totally flummoxed. The “je ne sais pas” strategy was totally overrated as a substitute for money and competence. Isabelle might come to the rescue later I hoped but for the moment it was difficult to be so ineffectively dependent. I felt like a fifty-year-old woman trying to hitch a ride in shorts and a halter-top. My version of damsel didn’t seem to be inspiring rescue. Perhaps I should have fainted.Chapter Thirty-five: Try Try AgainA warning to European travelers, since Euro is the currency all over Europe now (except in the U.K.) don’t get travelers checks. Take your credit card and do not forget your pin number like I did.Though I had failed to enjoy awe, wonder and mystery that comes from je ne sais pas I was not ready to give up my fight against my curmudgeon defenses. The next day I let go of my “je ne sais pas” challenge and took up another. I decided to take the curmudgeon challenge expressed by Christian and me, i.e., once you have seen one pretty place you have seen two. Meaning there is nothing different in one’s individual experience of pretty places.The question is: can I see into a place the essence of its unique beauty and can I distinguish its beauty from the beauty of other places? Having done that can I let the special qualities of this unequally beautiful place penetrate my soul? No curmudgeon can accomplish these tasks. For them the internal experience of beauty follows the same neurological neurohormone path.This day we were off on a circular trip to Nyon going around Mt. Venteux. A few miles outside we realized that I was supposed to have brought my travelers checks so that we could cash them in Nyon. This realization almost ruined my appetite for the challenge, but soon we came upon a valley of blue lavender, the likes of which we had not yet seen. The blue was not just an aura emerging from the ground as we had seen before. It was arranged in bright in clear rows like a series of velvet purple/blue ribbons placed one beside the other with their soft threads waving in the breeze. Unlike the other dryer, fainter lavender fields, these fields had a clear unmistakable scent that filled the air around for miles. It is a scent like no other that has no other name but lavender. It is soft, sweet blue scent and words I do not know.If one grew up here this soft deep blue would have to become part of your blood. It poured into my soul like the new green of spring sometimes does in my heart, hungry for life to emerge from the dread of winter. The blue was alive, uninterrupted by any other color, framed by the brown tan earth that formed the rows. This earth was so rocky and dry nothing else will grow in these fields. The French farmers en Provence had used the sun and what little water they had to its best advantage.If this were one’s childhood home there would have to be something special about your soul if you knew this blue from birth. I feel that way about my hometown. Arkadelphia, Arkansas, the last role of a hill from the Ozark Mountains, moving from Northwest Arkansas as far south as the hills can roll and there is Arkadelphia. It’s where the Caddo River meets the Ouchita River. It’s streets were lined with 100 year old pin oaks, whose tops touched high above the streets forming a sanctuary for its children riding bicycles on the safe streets all over town. I know what these giant trees did for me. I know what effect the ravines around the rivers had on my courage. I know what the expanse of timber and farmland meeting the rolling hills at the edge of town did for my imagination. We who had the privilege of growing up there have a special identity. There is something we know and understand about that place and each other that has no words.This must be true of the people that come from these lavender fields and this is the challenge. How is this beautiful place different from other beautiful places? What does it do that is unique and special to the souls of its people?This blue must teach the people who grow up with it some sense about color, shade and ambience. It must give them a special appreciation for how things smell. It must affect their tastes, how and what they eat and drink. It must give them a special appreciation for the incidental elements of daily living.There, I think I did it.  This is my best effort at answering the challenge. I saw a pretty place. I looked for and found what I thought must be unique about it and how it made its people special, different than me with something special to give and teach me. This was fun. I wanted to do it again.I thought about the topography of Buis. Buis is the word for a small tree that looks something like the boxwood. Large Plantan trees and Tulliel trees shade the town. Fruit trees are everywhere, fig, apricot, cherry, and peach, walnut trees as well. The town was cut out of the mountains by a small river that in places was small enough to jump across. The nearest mountain had an outcropping of giant rocks that at the top formed a hogback. These rocks seemed to reflect an enthusiasm and irrepressible strength that was not necessarily appropriate, but must be expressed. Large hills of olive trees, climbing the terraces of its steep sides, edge the village. All the land here was used by a road, a house, a tree, a plant, a river or creekbed. Though this space received little more rainfall than a desert, nothing was wasted. But that was true everywhere in Provence. The river, the hills emerging quickly from the river, the trees, the mountains surrounding close by, the hogback of rocks pushing out of the St. Julien mountain right next to the town, these are what defined this town as special. Energy, refuge, enough water but not too much, must create a special human inhabitant with a joie de vivre that is rare. I could see it in Jean Paul and in the boy at the dance. I saw it in the rudeness of the bank teller and the warmth that spilled out of Michline.As we left the valley of the lavender fields we moved across a pass into a more expansive valley. It was greener. The mountains that surrounded it were much further from the center of the circle they formed. These hills rolled like the hills of southwest Arkansas, but they had mountains, which created vistas that I had never imagined as a boy. Not far from any point of this valley was an angle, an upgrade that gave an onlooker a perspective that transcended the trees. The lines weren’t angular as they were in Buis le Baronnies. They were soft and round. The colors were greener, less harsh and desert like. Mt. Venteux still formed a part of the distant skyline, but one who lived here must have had more room and perhaps more flexibility, perhaps more wealth and more opportunity than the citizens of Buis. The churches seemed bigger to me, the castles grander.This challenge kept my interest.On our trip, when stopped, I would write down my observations about the beauty and topography of the land. When I tried to explain my task to Isabelle and Marietta and invite them to play this game with me Marietta said. “That is too much work. I just want to see the land and feel what I feel. I don’t want to have to describe or justify my experience.”Isabelle concurred. “Of course everything is beautiful in its own way. I want to feel it, not think about it.”“Yes its too much work,” Marietta said.“Don’t think David,” Isabelle said, “just absorb what you see in your heart.”But whatever their needs, my curmudgeon spirit seemed to need a task. It is as if I must have something to examine and describe. If I do not have a positive task to focus on I will unleash my critical self in the form of sarcastic editorials, complaints and negative expressions about whatever. Taking on the challenge of differentiating among pretty places and their effects on its people seemed to be a great improvement in me as a companion. But I’m not the one to ask. Later perhaps Marietta will offer an opinion. She, after all, is living in the same room with me.After a while I tried again to get Isabelle and Marietta interested in the fact that the essence of a place could have a pull on our soul. Isabelle seemed to understand.“Christian and I liked life in Nashville. We lived there for two years. When Christian finished his fellowship he had many possible offers, one in Nashville, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Canada. We chose to return to Paris where Christian would make less money. I would have to wait a year before I could find work and we could not afford a place of our own so we lived in an apartment next door to Christian’s parents. I hated that. Even if I had known how hard it would be, I still would have chosen to return to Paris, not because of family. I enjoyed being independent of my family duties. Not because of friends. I make friends easily. The reason is because of the age of things in France. I missed the old buildings, the small stone streets, the plaster walls and history dating back to the Romans. I especially missed my weekly Marché, picking among the vegetables, fruits and meats. Talking to and knowing the vendors personally, having them save things especially for me, sharing stories about our children. I love knowing the Marché has been this way for centuries.”I understood this. I had an option to remain in Palo Alto after my internship there, but I came back to Nashville, because everything in California seemed so impermanent. Nobody I knew was born there. Though it was the most beautiful climate I had ever lived in, it seemed to have no soul that I could tap into. I understood the green hills of Nashville, the tall trees, the azaleas in spring, the pink, red, orange, yellow maples in fall. People had roots there, roots I felt I could join. Isabelle’s roots in Paris were even deeper. Where I knew nothing in Arkadelphia much over 100 years old, she knew things attached to stories over 1,000 years old. She loved these places, things and their stories. They were part of her.I thought I was doing well with my attempts to change. My dream that night suggested otherwise. I dreamed that Marietta was two-timing me. She preferred the other guy, the one she had been with before me. He called her on the phone and told her to meet him and they would make love in the phone booth. This conversation took place right in front of me. She hung up the phone and left me there. The end.Isabelle and I deduced that Marietta in the dream represented my feminine side. The dream seemed to be saying that I currently preferred my old set of masculine defenses to the new ones I was developing.Chapter Thirty-six: Sex and the City in FrancePerhaps the most interesting thing about this trip to me is the contrast of cultures between France and the U.S. As I reflect on the points of view of Isabelle and Christian, there are two positions currently of note to me. One has to do with Charlotte and the other with religion.The last time we were here we observed how Isabelle and Christian were adjusting to their eighteen-year-old son, Thomas’ and his more or less public intention to be sexually active with his serious girlfriend. The question then was: Was it okay (d’acor) for them that their son brought his girlfriend to their house to spend the night with him.The answer was a pragmatic one, “yes, because if we didn’t he wouldn’t come here to sleep. He would go to her apartment where they could sleep together. We want to see him as much as possible. Fortunately our apartment is close to his school, so it’s convenient for them to be here.”Now Charlotte at nineteen presented a parallel question to her parents. “Can I move into an apartment with Vincent, (her first serious boyfriend) and two other roommates?”The answer was “yes,” but with more trauma and emotion.  Christian explained, “Charlotte has very good grades, but I told her I thought this was a mistake, but it was her choice to make and she would learn from it right or wrong. She promised she would keep her grads high. We will see.” Here the decision was the same as before, but there seemed to be a bit more emotion from father to daughter.When Charlotte and her father were together you could see why. Her eyes lighted up in her conversations with her father (of which I could not understand a word). Christian’s curmudgeon exterior melted and a soft smile came to his face. His gestures were lively and animated. They both laughed together easily and a lot. I understood Christian’s answer to Charlotte in this context.The second cultural observation had to do with religion. I talked about this on our last visit to France. Isabelle was fascinated by churches and abbeys. She seemed sympathetic to all things spiritual, but skeptical of people who tried to represent them. The official church seemed to her to be fake and hypocritical. The French during the Hugenot period experienced horrible civil wars. From the twenty-first century perspective these wars seem so silly to both her and Christian. Then there is the land wealth and excess of the Catholic Church that seemed only to benefit it’s clergy and not the people.This skepticism seemed to be reflected in a local hardware storekeeper in Nyons. We had been searching for a transformer to use for the battery charger on our camera. The hardware store keeper in Nyons said he had one, but he would have to get it. It would be at his store at 1400 heuras (2:00 PM).When we returned to pick it up it was a giant brown metal box weighing fifteen pounds. Since buying this old contraption was cheaper than a camera with film we took it. While there we asked him for directions to the cave out of which came “le ventre de Pantois.” Isabelle related the legend she had just read in the local guidebook. He said there is another legend and that was that a government minister brought the wind, not a catholic cleric.To me this smacked of a revisionist story told after the French revolution because of the anti-catholic spirit that has pervaded France since that time. Though I don’t claim to believe either story, we went to see this hole from which the wind blew. We found it where the guidebooks said it would be, 100 meters from a small isolated chapel called Notre Dame.The hole was covered with a steel mesh gate because someone had died exploring the cave in the last twenty or so years. It was easy to believe that this hole may have appeared suddenly because this cave was part of a large crevice running along the mountain here. Perhaps the limestone of the strata of rock had dissolved and an earthquake or something occurred so that the rock split here. It was believable that a sudden geological event happened here years before. Whether or not it changed the wind, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.Chapter Thirty-seven: French CharactersOn our last trip I used Frances Mayes as a mentor. I gathered her pearls of wisdom from her book Under the Tuscan Sun. For this trip I used Peter Mayle as my guide. He wrote several books about Provence. The one I read was A Year in Provence.The strength of Frances as a mentor was in her relationship and her life story, from her poetic emotionally stirring images. The details of Tuscan food, home remodeling tragedies and changes in the seasons were offered in the context of her family life, her divorce, her daughter’s visit with her boyfriend, her relationship with Ed and her reflections about her mother and grandmother and her Southern U.S. roots.Peter says little about his family, wife or personal history. His strength is in his character descriptions.  He introduces his reader to the men who come to work remodeling his new home. His most celebrated characters are true French curmudgeons, Massot and Faustin. Learning from Peter is taking lesson in character study. There’s none of the philosophical language about quests or personal self-disclosure of Frances.Here is my attempt at capturing the French provincial spirit:Jean PierreJean Pierre is Michline’s boyfriend or significant other. He is a retired restaurateur, formerly from Paris. He is about 65-70 years old. Everytime we saw him he was wearing shorts, sandals and an open neck shirt with a gold chain or he was wearing a bathing suit. Though we couldn’t understand him, nor he us, he was always smiling and friendly. He had his own house very near Michline’s but he helped her build her house and swimming pool. Michline’s children called him “Jempy.”He laughed easily and often. He came to the July 14^th dance in the town square with Michline and company. He bought us all drinks and he responded to Marietta’s attention kindly, but was clearly frustrated that they could not communicate better.At the celebration when not talking he was swaying with the music, singing with the crowds on songs that most of the audience seemed to know by heart. On one song he was so animated that he bounced his plastic chair and turned it in circles. I imagined Jean Pierre to be the prototype Frenchman who knew how to eat, drink, relax and enjoy life. He had a woman, but was not encumbered by marriage. He seemed to be warmly appreciated by her and her children and he seemed to love hosting them and us.MichlineMichline was a nurse and mother in her mid-fifties. She was a glow with the children who had come to share their summer vacation with their mother. She was solicitous of us and her children’s friends. She was dressed in ways that showed her ample cleavage to its best advantage. She moved with a “softique” rubenesque sensuality. She obviously appreciated Jean Pierre’s attention and he obviously was pleased to be with her.Her sensuality and earthiness seemed to be natural for her. She seemed to take great pleasure in shopping for and feeding her suddenly enormous family which included herself, Jean Pierre, her two daughters, another girlfriend of her daughters, her daughter’s boyfriend Guilliame and his friend Vincent and Vincent’s girlfriend, Charlotte and other assorted, comers and goers.As I imagine her in her bathing suit, sitting at the large outdoor table under the portico, next to her swimming pool, I see her bringing an endless stream of wine and food, encouraging her brood to go swim or come out of the pool and eat and drink. She along with Jean Pierre represented the typical life affirming French man and woman. Madame FachenerriOur neighbor, landlord and concierge Madame Fachenerri invited us on a two and a half hour walk the evening after we returned from our trip to Nyon. While Christian declined, the three of us accepted.Marietta and Isabelle put some water in a thermos, cut some bread and cheese, picked some fruit from the table and packed deux sac ‘a d’eau (two day packs). I carried one, Isabelle the other. Madame Fachenerri had the same idea. She came walking below our balcony at about 8:00 PM saddled with her own sac ‘a d’eau. The sun still brightly shining even though it was on its way toward sunset.Madame Fachenerri was a short round sixty-three-year-old woman. The hike she proposed was straight up the hill in back of her (our) house. Our pace was slow but constant. We walked through the fields with Madame Fachenerri chattering constantly in French. Isabelle even had some difficulty keeping up. Marietta said she understood about every third word. Me, I understood every tenth word, which was “mari,” meaning husband.She talked mostly about her husband. Isabelle translated some of her chatter. Isabelle said she talked French like an Italian.We saw her husband in the house. He was always hooked to an oxygen machine. It seemed that his work as a contractor and stonemason, a profession he had had since he was ten years old, created so much dust that he now has emphysema.She and her husband, according to Isabelle, were much like Isabelle and Christian. She loved travel and nature walks. He only wanted to work. She loved music, dancing and swimming. He only wanted to work. They have three sons. One lives in Bordeaux. He’s married to a doctor. He works part-time and takes care of their four children while his wife works full time. The other two sons live with her. One is married with two children. The other is single and recently jilted by his girlfriend of eight years by his best friend. She liked the girl, made her one of the family. The girl had good parents. She doesn’t blame the girl. She blames them both.They were building a house just below for one son and his family. The construction is at a standstill because her husband got sick. Also the house is not what her son and his wife want. They plan to build a home for each child on their land. All plans seem to be put on the back burner since her husband’s illness. There were stories about her grandchildren and her friend in Paris and when she got married and how the olives were picked.Around Christmas the olive harvest is on in earnest, people pick olives by hand and put them in sacks hanging around their necks or they use a special rake to shake and pull the olives down.As she talked and Isabelle, bless her heart, listened and partially translated, we walked up through olive groves then onto a gravel road by blackberry briars. We picked and ate a few blackberries. Each berry was small with only a few sacks of juice and pulp, but oh they were sweet. Then came apricot groves. Each of us ate several, perhaps ten. They too were seemingly unusually sweet. Some were hard and dry, but even they were still sweet. The road was dotted with cherry trees of ripe tart red cherries, plum trees with branches we couldn’t reach, dead or dying almond trees, walnut trees with not yet ripe green nuts.We reached the apex of our walk about 9:30 P.M. The sun set about the same time. We walked in twilight. The views of Buis from above and the vista of the surrounding mountains including the 6,000-foot tall Mt. Venteux and the hogback topped Mt. St. Julien were extraordinary from this perspective in this light. We returned home by 10:00 P.M. as the half moon rose over the mountain.Chapter Thirty-eight: Mt. St. JulienThe next day was so hot, 36º centigrade. Marietta has a formula for converting centigrade to Farenheit. I don’t swear by it. It goes like this: Multiply the centigrade temperature by two and add thirty. For this day that would be 36 x 2 = 72 + 30 = 102°. The temperature here was hot, but in Nashville a 90° day had seemed hotter to me. The Nashville humidity magnifies temperature’s effects. My friend and contractor Mark Meinhart tells me Nashville is nothing compared to Houston. He lived there for forty years before he moved to Nashville. Just after he moved to Nashville Mark took his wife and family to play miniature golf. He saw something there when we looked at the lights that was remarkable to him. He pointed to the lights and called to his wife to look at them. She responded immediately, “no bugs.”“No,” meaning not any bugs could not have been an accurate observation, but perhaps there were much less bugs or a less dense swarm of bugs in Nashville than there had been in Houston. While in Marseille, which is on the Mediterranean Sea, I wasn’t sweating in 96° heat. By 6:00 or 7:00 P.M. the air there was very comfortable. The French complained about being uncomfortable in the heat, but like Mark in his reference to us about Houston, the French don’t know from heat discomfort. Nashville beats Buis, Marseille and all of France according to the French we spoke with by a country kilometer and Houston apparently beats France by a country mile according to Mark.We all stayed close to home this hot day. We closed the shutters at about 11:00 A.M. to capture as much cool as possible and to keep out the light. This worked pretty well. The dry 102º was hot, but not overwhelming as it would have been in Nashville.To reward ourselves for surviving the hottest day on record in 2003 we drove 10 kilometers to Mollans to the restaurant Le St. Marc for dinner. The dinner was good except for the fish soup, which had the same fish base for the bouillabaisse we had in Marseille. Marietta’s rabbit was excellent. It was a row of slices of rabbit meat wrapped around an abricot with a walnut in the center of each slice. Christian and I had confit ‘a canard. Which was a leg of duck cooked in tulliel meil (honey) sauce. The meat fell off the bone. Isabelle had a light white fish “lou” or “bar” (which they thought was the American version of bass).The problem we had was not with the food. It was with the flies. It seemed that even though the river is almost dry, the hills above Mollans have springs that provide water to the town. In addition to drinking water these springs provide irrigation water. People are allocated times that they can open their Watergates for their individual purposes. A neighbor of St. Marc’s left open the Watergate and it flooded the grounds of the restaurant with over a foot of water this morning. The moisture attracted an unusual amount of flies.After eating we drove home and went straight to bed because we had accepted the invitation from Madame Facchinerri to go with her on a walk to the top of Mt. Saint Julien at 6:15 AM. We had to get back in time before church, because she wanted to attend church, which was at 11:00.In the morning we heard Isabelle turning on the dishwasher at 5:45. We rolled out of bed. The sun was well into the sky. At 6:15 Madame Facchinerri came out with her sac ‘a d’os. In French this means “sack attached to the bones,” which as you recall is a backpack. We put some fruit and water in ours and off we went in two cars. We followed her up a mountain road and dropped off our car at the trails end. We piled in her car. The car radio was singing at high volume. She asked if we wanted music. Isabelle said no.Perhaps she regretted this decision because Madame Facchinerri began talking and didn’t stop for remainder of the trip. Isabelle’s first defense was to fall to the rear to take pictures, but that didn’t work for long because Madame Facchinerri stopped to wait for her to catch up.I was absolutely of no use to Isabelle because I could barely understand what Ms. Facchinerri meant when she said “arretez-vous” meaning “stop” or “ a droit” when she meant “to the right.” Marietta was only a little better.This trip Isabelle translated several stories. There was the story of Madame Facchinerri’s schooling in Italy. She was born in 1940. Her father left and was not home for several years because he was fighting for the Italian resistance. He was presumed dead. She was sent to the convent because her mother could not support her five children. The nuns educated her. She left home at sixteen. She came to France.Another story had to do with her sister who was getting married for the third time. This was going to work this time because she has been with this man for fifteen years.Then there was the story of his son meeting his wife, the stewardess, in a yoga class in Buis. They have two children. His wife got pregnant recently only because she wanted an excuse to avoid flights to China where she might catch SARS.The last story was about a niece of a friend of hers who had been sexually abused by the nieces’ grandfather, the father of the mother. The mother blamed her daughter for these events causing a schism in the family, between the niece and the other children and the mother. Since Isabelle was a psychologist Madame Facchinerri wondered if she could explain how a mother could blame her own child for this rather than protect her.Isabelle did her best to answer this complex and difficult question.“This happens to me all the time,” Isabelle said. “People just talk to me and tell me their stories whether they know I am a psychologist or not.” I can testify. I too used Isabelle to tell my stories to as well.The Mt. St. Julien trail was uphill for about five kilometers. It was cool at first and the air felt fresh. But even without the heat we were sweating a bit. My shirt was damp where my sac ‘a d’os pressed against it. The trail moved around St. Julien behind the perspective we saw from the house. The vegetation consisted of buis bushes and scub pine. There were wild lavenders, rosemary and thyme along the trail. The rocks sometimes had black lichen in their cracks.I apologize for my clichéd expression “the views were spectacular,” but they were. We were high above Buis. We could barely pick out our house. The giant rock eruptions that formed Mt. Saint Julien’s hogback were not as sharp and as narrow as one imagined. Often people rock climbed the side of them and hiked. One could walk directly on top of what looked like a sharp edge from below.  Upon closer inspection this edge was a six foot wide flat surface. At one point someone had placed a small metal cross barely visible from our house on top of the center of the hogback. Every year in June, when the Catholic Church celebrates Ascension, luminary candles were placed on top of the hogback.We returned home from this hike at 11:00 AM and immediately went back to bed for a nap. We slept until about 14:00.Chapter Thirty-nine: Mecca ColaThe day was hot. We stayed shuttered up again in our house. When we got up Christian was watching grand prix racing on TV. We began again our constant conversation.“I don’t understand what happened.” Christian said. “After World War II, America was the country that liberated Paris. Oh sure they let Charles De Gaulle and the French troops go in first, but everybody knew it was the U.S. that saved us. But since that really short time ago America has lost its image here. You only show the worst of America to us, your movies advertise you as a violent country. Your corporations bring the worst of your commercialism here. McDonald’s is a symbol for that. Our Minister of Agriculture organized the storming of a McDonalds in the countryside. They demolished it. Chirac commuted a part of his sentence. He was popular in France for doing that.“An Algerian businessman capitalized on American’s poor image by bottling a version of a Coke or Pepsi calling it Mecca Cola. This was marketed as an alternative cola to the American version and it is doing well.“I have a scientist colleague who hates America because of its violence and commercialism, its’ mean spirited racism and inadequate social net, its consumerism, buying things you don’t need, its arrogant, go it alone, historically ignorant foreign policy. I tell him that is correct, but it is only half the story. I don’t understand why America does not export the good side too, the can-do spirit, the openness to change and new ideas, the freedom to express various points of view, your anti-bureaucratic, self-reliant spirit. One has to go to America to see this side.”I was not able to offer much of a defense or apology. Marietta and I were the consumers he talked about. We were re-modeling our house, spending the banks money for things we could absolutely do without.“In France,” Christian said, “we think about each purchase. We don’t just buy. We think, ‘do we really need it our not?’ We cannot afford impulse buying and we don’t want to. We have enough money for what we need. Many of us who are well-educated could be richer if we didn’t take care of those who are not working. But we want to do this. We don’t want to live rich while others are poor. Perhaps this is our guilt problem. Yours is about sex. Of course powerful leaders of countries have mistresses. So what. We don’t get hung up on that. We get hung up on making money. If someone makes a lot of money we assume he did something wrong. Where in your country you don’t do that. But if someone is with a woman other than his wife you assume he is a bad lawyer or doctor or president, when that has nothing to do with his competence in his professional role.”Chapter Forty: Marietta is a curmudgeonFor the last two walks I noticed something about Marietta that I had never seen before. She was complaining. It is not that Marietta never complains. “You never throw away the yogurt cup after you rinse it out,” or “when you wipe the counters, they are never clean,” or “when you take off your socks at night you always leave them in a pile on the floor.” These are typical complaints, but on a trip it is usually me that complains.“Oh do we have to go?” or “my back hurts,” or I become sarcastic, “one more pretty place. When will we run out of them?”On our first walk with Madame Facchinerri from Marietta it was, “It will be dark before we get back. Are we sure we know how to get back?” or “When does this trail ever start going downhill,” or “that apricot was too hard.” All these comments were said only to me. Luckily I gave no answer. Here I saw the benefit of je ne sais pas.I knew I had made progress when it was my voice I heard respond with the positive answer when Marietta complained about the hard, dry apricots, “Oh but even hard they are so sweet straight off the tree.” When Marietta said, “I wonder if Madame Facchinerri will ever stop talking” I heard out of my mouth, “I think she has interesting stories, though. Don’t you?”We had changed roles. In couples I see when progress is being made one of the two in the couple is psychologically far ahead of the other. If and when the one behind catches up the problems that the other one creates for the partnership emerge or sometimes they change roles. Changing roles like this is a sign of growth and progress in a couple. I said nothing about this, but I was secretly proud that I was catching up.It was on the next walk that I became concerned. Again Marietta was tired. It was 5:45 when she got up after all. “Why can’t we just sleep,” were my usual words, but they came out of Marietta’s mouth. Then came the clincher. “Let’s stop and take that picture,” I suggested and her reply was, “Oh it’s just another pretty place let’s go on and get this over with,” This is when I knew something was wrong.The next day this dark mood continued. It was most obvious at the Flaminco concert that night at the roman theatre at Vasion la Roman. I had purchased a special theatre chair with a back so I was happy. We were late meeting Charlotte and her friends. I drove as fast as I could to get there, but I couldn’t make up any time. We parked. Isabelle and I jumped out of the car and began a fast walk toward the theatre that was about 400 meters ahead. We were half way there before I realized that Marietta was walking about 50 meters behind. And she was not trying to catch up. I knew she felt like we ran off and left her. We stopped and waited and went through the theatre gates with her. When I asked her about it she pointed to her swollen ankles. Her ankles sometimes swell for no apparent reason and she will take a diuretic and the swelling will go down. But they are uncomfortable for a while.Once seated and inside it was, “I think I like music concerts better.” “The dancers are all right but I don’t like how that lead woman dancer seems to lord it over everybody else.”The worst came when Isabelle invited Charlotte and her friends over for lunch for Wednesday their last day here. “Oh but it will be too hot then and we will be all closed up in the dark.” While that was true, Marietta knew it was the only time Charlotte gave her mother for such an occasion. Marietta seemed to be looking for a fight with Isabelle.This confirmed my fears. Marietta had become a curmudgeon, fully fledged and initiated. I now had a view from both sides of the equation. I can see the elements. One is pain. For me it is often a hurt back.  For Marietta it was her feet. Another is fatigue. I used to carry a fifty-hour caseload, which meant I worked a sixty to eighty hour week and I was tired all the time. On vacations rest was my main agenda. Now I work a normal week and I feel mostly rested. Marietta on the other hand gets up everyday at 6:00 A.M. and gets home from work about 7:30 P.M. after a long day of refereeing disputes. The last few days we have gone on long walks. Marietta has not had time to rest and get in very good shape before our trip. She was tired.The next element is competition. This is something that Marietta doesn’t feel as often as I do. Somehow I am programmed to take up any challenge. I feel competitive juices flowing in me constantly. I am not proud of this. These juices create contests that could and should be easily avoided. When we are walking and looking on vacation and Marietta sees an expensive pretty necklace I feel challenged to buy it for her. When I immediately realize I can’t, I feel inadequate. For me, and I think for many other men, these competitive feelings and their companion feelings of inadequacy are a constant companions. They are, I think, a centerstone for curmudgeondom. As Marietta began to feel competitive with Isabelle she had the three important elements for becoming a curmudgeon. She was feeling pain, she was tired and she was feeling inadequate.I recognized these elements because they have been so much a part of my life. Marietta will soon get enough sleep. She will take her diuretic and her feet will be back to normal. She is one to accept a challenge, but she does not take the bait as easily as I. She will soon feel as good as and equal to, instead of the less than she was feeling now (that I and other men feel a lot of the time).For me it was liberating to see these three things come together, to turn Marietta from an easy to be with, positive, enthusiastic person to a difficult woman. In her experience I see the things that have made me a difficult man.I see things that made my father a difficult man. As a boy I was curious. I wanted to travel and see the world. I wondered about the World’s Seven Wonders. I wanted to be Tarzan in Africa.I wonder if my father was not the same. Oh I knew he had a reputation for having a temper even as a boy. He had a much greater problem with anger than I have had. But his difficult personality had all the elements above. He was allergic to everything. Often he could not breath through his nose. In the summer in the humidity of south Arkansas he must have suffered terribly. His constant companion was a bottle of nose spray. He ordered them by the dozen.He was challenged to compete. His father, my grandfather, had a psychotic break when he was a young man and my father became the sole support for his mother and three sisters. Somehow he helped put his sisters through college and later had to support his mother and father and his wife and four children. He worked very hard. He was never financially comfortable. And of course he was tired.All the elements were there in him. By the time he was my age he was at the tail end of his intense financial demands, but his character was formed. He hadn’t the means or the will to change. Though he did mellow as he got older, he was a curmudgeon til the end.Chapter Forty-one: Incroyable, C’est DungueToday we were going on a trip to the Plateau Colorado. It is not in the U.S. It is in the South of France near Rousiallan en Provence between the Plateua de Verecluse and the Montagne Du Luberon. According to Isabelle it is a magic place. “The place where if you die there, it is all right. The flowers they are like a carpet.”To encourage Christian to come and to reassure us Isabelle promised, “You won’t have to go up. It is flat because it is a plateau. And it is cool, high above sea level. You may even be cold and need a jacket.”Christian resisted. He said, “I know what going on a walk in the country is. There is a view. You look at it for about ten minutes and it is beautiful, but most of the time you are hot, looking down at your feet so that you won’t sprain you ankle. It’s one hour looking down at your feet and the rock until you get to the view, ten minutes of a pretty view and then one hour back looking down at your feet and the rock.”In this case the trip was an hour and a half in the car to the trailhead, another three- hour circular walk and then an hour and a half drive back. We met Emmanuel and Caroline their two children Julie, sixteen and Margurite, twelve and their Canadian friends Dean and Leslie and their two children Ryan, fifteen and Megan, ten. Emmanuel was Isabelle’s cousin.The trip was more or less or advertised except there was some uphill grade in the beginning. This was sheepherder territory. This land is used by shepherds even today. Every spring shepherds walk their sheep down from this mountain toward the coast. There are special routes designated for this trek. In the fall they herd their sheep back to the mountains. This migration is exactly the opposite of the migration of Elk in Yellowstone Park, for example. It makes sense here because in the summer the mountains are dry and in the winter they receive most of their rainfall. The weather is so temperate that it rarely falls to far below freezing.The shepherds have constructed old stone cribs that look like igloos for the sheep, some with attached stone shelters for themselves. They were built with old Roman arch construction designs and are centuries old.The land was dry. The flowers that had been there for Isabelle two years ago were not there, but the views were, three hundred and sixty degree panoramas. On a very clear, low humidity day one car see the Alps from here, but not today. We were grateful for the clouds. Today the sun would have been hot without them. We were comfortable on our walk when a cloud blocked the sun and that was about half the time. We definitely didn’t need jackets.The views were magnificent. This place was like walking on a circular cloud. The people fascinated me more than the views. There was Dean, an engineer in his late forties from Canada. He overheard my definition of the term curmudgeon after Isabelle asked me about it because it was a new term to her. After I explained the word I said often men suffered this condition more than women. Dean contradicted my stereotype and said, “Not me. I’m the opposite of that. I don’t complain. I look at the positive. I love to play, participate and enjoy life. I love a good beer.”Yet as we walked Dean unknowingly joined the curmudgeon club, “This walk is too long. How far have we come?” shortly another complaint came. “I would rather be drinking beer than this.” Or “Where is the air conditioner?” Another curmudgeon among us, this one in denial.Dean, inspite of his curmudgeon spirit, was an excellent father. We saw his son walking in front of the “peloton” (the pack) alone. “Son wait up,” he called. He walked quickly gaining on Ryan as Ryan waited. When he reached him he said, “May I join you?” Ryan replied, “Sure.” He put his arm over Ryan’s shoulder, while Ryan put his arm around his father’s waist. They walked on together. They laughed and talked together as they walked for some time.Dean’s daughter, Megan, was equally attended to by her father. She wanted her turn to carry the sac au d’os and he saw to it that she had it. He teased her and kept her connected to the group. He encouraged his children’s physical play with one another. Clearly Megan and Ryan were unusually close for a brother and sister at that age.Ryan was a typical energetic teenager. When we came upon one of the shepherd igloo-like buildings, he climbed on top and began to pick stone from the top and throw them. “Ryan don’t,” his mother Leslie, cried with urgency. “Ryan get down,” came Dean’s reprimand.Befuddled Ryan climbed down. “What did I do wrong? I can’t throw a rock?” he asked clearly embarrassed now. And his parents were embarrassed for him. He meant no harm and barely understood the reprimand.“It’s okay,” his father said, “You can throw a rock. You just can’t throw those rocks. They are part of an ancient structure.”“So what,” Ryan said.“These shepherd’s huts go back centuries. We want to preserve them for your children so you can bring them here and your son will jump on this hut and throw a rock and you can tell him what I just told you.”“I don’t get it, “ Ryan said. “What’s the big deal about some old hut, Why don’t they build a newer nicer one?”This instinctive clash of generations, a group of late forty and fifty year olds wanting to respect and preserve history as they faced their own aging and prospects of leaving the planet and the young adolescent who saw history as confining and to be torn down to make way for the creations of a new generation. In this moment the older generation prevailed.Emmanuel, Isabelle’s cousin, was a schoolteacher and an actor. He was also a superb father. His daughter’s formed a line and began dancing a line dance without music. Emmanuel quickly joined them, stepping in the line, knowing the steps. “My daughter’s taught me,” he said, “and they taught you too Megan. Come on. Get in line.”Megan had to be coaxed some more but she finally jumped in line in step with the others, sliding, turning, kicking and jumping simultaneously with Emmanuel, Julie and Margurite. As the dance broke up Emmanuel led his daughters in the Sound of Music’s “Do a Deer a female deer, Ray a drop of… etc.” We all sang along.Emmanuel reminded me of my cousin Jerry Vestal. His face held a smile longer than any other expression. He seemed always willing to join and be influenced to be a part of whatever. When Isabelle lost her watch he organized the search and spent an hour or more looking until they found it. His wife Caroline was a lot like him and Isabelle. Like him she was a teacher in Toulouse.  He taught what we call Junior High or Middle School children. She was a teacher of French as a second language. Their daughter Julie was about the same age as Charlotte was the last time we came. She had Charlotte’s same confidence and irrepressible spirit. Her exuberance crossed our language barrier and she had her turn playing with everybody there even Marietta and me. And we appreciated it.Emmanuel proved to me that a man can be something other than a curmudgeon. I wish I had more time with him so that he could show me how he did it. His response to Isabelle’s distress at losing her watch taught me one thing. And that was that patience at a difficult moment announces to people that you are not a curmudgeon, that in fact you are willing to be influenced by accept and understand someone’s feelings other than you own. Later I used this technique by picking up trash on the trail. I hoped that I could somehow get points for that, if not here on earth perhaps in heaven or perhaps in my own head as I attempted to redefine my character.Chapter Forty-two: Christian’s DayWe were exhausted on day thirteen of our trip. This was Tuesday after we went to the Plateau Colorado with Isabelle’s cousin and his family and friends and after we returned from the Flamingo concert at 1:30 A.M. I got up earlier than I intended at 9:00 A.M. Isabelle was already awake. She had been up since 7:00 A.M. I ate my wonderful Danon Peche (peach) yogurt, the likes of this tart creamy version of yogurt I have never had.Christian was up by 10:00 A.M. This was early for him. I presumed this was in part because he was beginning to catch up on his rest. We spent most of the morning talking about his work and the politics that surround it and his attempts to stay the course, to keep his integrity in difficult circumstances.Christian takes the ideas we offer gracefully and thinks about putting them to work. Marietta has more to offer than either I or Isabelle because in her work as judge she deals with similar delicate political issues.Isabelle prepared lunch from the food we bought in Banon on the way home from the Colorado Plateau. I have never had a lunch like this one. “I try to cook in the Provence way,” she said. Slices of eggplant were cooked in butter and olive oil with salt and thyme for seasoning. Slivers of red pepper were cooked the same way. Zucchini squash was cut into long thin sticks and also cooked in butter and olive oil then fresh lemons were squeezed on top of the squash soaking it in juice. With this we had a terrine au campagne that we bought in a world famous boucherie (butcher shop) in Banon. This shop sends its products all over the world. This place had its own postcard with a picture of the butcher standing behind the counter with sausages dangling around him hanging from the ceiling. The words on the postcard were Products de Banon (Alpes de Haute-Provence) specialitiés de Saucisses (Franiches, Seches, Parfuéas) Fromage de Banon Produits Régionaux. The terrine we bought there was a wonderful combination of “je ne sais pas.” Even Christian and Isabelle “je ne said pas.” It was wonderful on a multi-grained French bread or slices of the traditional baguettes.As an aside food here is very expensive. A chicken cost us twelve Euros. Clearly the French farmer is protected from American competition. The thinking according to Christian, is that if the French farmers are dislocated from their farms by foreign competition the government will have to support them. So the higher price on food is a way of taxing the French people. They will have to pay the price either in the price of food or in higher taxes. The land remains productive. France remains independent of other countries supplying their food. I don’t see how this will change, even though it is a severe disadvantage to the French consumer and the general quality of life in France.Back to lunch. We had a variety of soft cheeses, mostly goat cheese for lunch. For desert we had sliced fresh fruit; melons, apricots, peaches, and nectarines with ice cream. We sat at the table expanding our life expectancy, according to Christian’s father, til 4:00 PM talking.At 4:00 Christian went with us to the cyber café to check our E-mails. Christian and I had a beer and sat at a table outside while Marietta went inside to sign up for next in line to get on the computer. Christian generously offered me a fine Cuban cigar. This was an El Ray Del Mundo Robesto, Choix Seupreme.  It is the first category of cigar from Cuba.  It had a four band rating out of five, Christian informed me.Christian had this special cigar lighter that spit out the flame of a torch.  It was dangerous, but effective.  One used it to light the cigar by holding the cigar in the hand, not the mouth.  Lighting it this way did not require puffing on it to get it started.  It was rather more like welding than lighting the cigar in the traditional way. Marietta returned with her own beer. After I lit my cigar I took my first puff and Christian and Marietta exploded, “Don’t inhale!”  I didn’t.  It was just a big toke.  It took awhile before I got what Christian meant by savoring the cigar.  It is much like sipping straight scotch whiskey just a small amount is enough.  It took a good forty minutes to completely smoke the cigar.  As I put it out, I felt a slight buzz.  It was a good feeling.  Christian said he felt a feeling of well-being smoking a cigar.  I felt slightly drunk.Christian and I went upstairs to see how Marietta was getting on with the computer.  She was doing fairly well considering that the French keyboard was different than the American version.  Christian took over for her and expedited the remaining part of the process.  The life of a pharmacological researcher makes Christian exceedingly competent with E-mail and the French computer. It seemed to all of us a miracle that we could check our E-mails in Buis Le Barronies en Provence. One sad note was that my elderly Aunt Jane was in the hospital from a stroke.  It made me wonder when people would be saying about me, “perhaps it is near his time.”  She is about eighty-nine, the last of her generation.Today was the first time I ever saw Isabelle inpatient and fractious. She had been short and irritated with Christian. Perhaps she was thinking about the next day when she had to entertain her daughter Charlotte and her boyfriend, Delphine and Guilliame. Perhaps she was tired. She hadn’t much sleep for several days. While we were gone Isabelle had a nap. When we returned she seemed to regain form. This confirmed my curmudgeon theory. Rest improves temper. Of course this is something that mother’s of young children have know for centuries.Chapter Forty-three: Our Very, Very Bad DayWhen I awoke, Marietta and Isabelle had gone to the Marché.  Charlotte and her friends were coming to lunch. This included Charlotte, Vincent, Delphine and Guilliame. This would take a lot of shopping.Just as I finished my breakfast and sat down to write, Christian came into the kitchen for his coffee and breakfast.  This was around 10:00 A.M., early for Christian on vacation.  As he began to fix his coffee, we heard a car drive up in front of our house and the honk of a car horn.  “They’re back,” we said together.  And I was thinking, “They want their pack mules to carry in the groceries.”Not so.  I heard a male voice say something French through the door.  I opened it and Jean Pierre bounded in, carrying Isabelle’s straw shopping bags.  (These bags are useful because they are oval shaped, smaller at the bottom and larger at the top, with strong handles.)  He went immediately to Christian and talked hurriedly with him in French.  I took the bags from him and began taking the groceries out of the bags.  From his hand gestures, I could tell something wasn’t right, but I assumed it was with him.  He was gone as quickly as he came.Something was wrong, but not with him.  Marietta had lost her keys.  Here it was at last, my final orals before I got my Ph.D. in the land beyond curmudgeondom.  How I handled this could crown me in glory, like Emmanuel’s concern and helpful assistance in Isabelle’s lost watch crisis anointed him as a prince of a guy (which he naturally is and I am not).Of course, my instinct is to feel threatened and storm down to find Marietta and become the complaining long-suffering husband who is a prince for suffering with Marietta losing keys.  That is my natural curmudgeon spirit.As this impulse flowed into my body, I observed it.  There were some good elements to this impulse.  This was a real threat and responding to it as such is not inappropriate.  I could feel emerging…. my instinct to sigh heavily and roll my head along with my eyes.  I knew that was wrong.  The frustration I felt at wanting to help and be effective, knowing that I had little to offer also seemed appropriate.  To manage this, I created a theory that the keys weren’t really lost.  They were locked in the car.  So we would have to call Hertz to bring another set.As soon as Christian and I put away the groceries, we got on our white horse, Christian’s Renault Lancia, and rushed to the Marché where we found masses of people clogging the streets. No Marietta or Isabelle, nor the car.  Christian let me out into the crowd while he looked for a place to park.That was a mistake.  I wandered the Marché aimlessly and the best parking place Christian could find was back at our house in our garage.While I was going through a parking lot looking for somebody’s car I recognized, I came upon the Lancia parked, blocking other cars.  Oh at last Christian decided to park there and wait for someone to find him.  I walked over to the passenger side, stuck my head in the door.  The driver turned to look at me. He wasn’t Christian.  I said, “excuse me,” which I’m sure he did not understand and I walked away feeling more lost, and more incompetent and more out of place.I turned back toward the Marché, hearing the beat of large drums.  I wandered toward them for no particular reason, still intently searching for someone or some car I recognized.  Before I knew it, I was walking in a procession with the drummers, who were snaking their way through the Marché in order to draw a crowd.  One of the drummers banged and snaked directly toward me.  Bum-Ba-Bum-Ba-Bum – right in my face.  Never have I found music more irritating!I continued my wandering until I saw Marietta’s straw hat.  All was well.  “The keys had been found and now I’ve found you.  I left the key in a booth in the Marché.  We drove home, found Christian and he told me that you were in the Marché.”This was anti-climatic for me.  My theory about locking the keys in the car was incorrect.  I had no audience that I could demonstrate my patience to.  This did not seem to be my moment to disclose my new found spirit.Marietta was smiling disarmingly as if all was well.  I decided my best tact was to let it be so.  When I retuned to the house, I tested my key-locked-in-the-car-theory.  With the Renault, the only locking device is the button on the key that radio’s a signal to the car to lock and unlock.  I tried to see if one might lock the key in the car somehow inadvertently and it was not possible.  Good for Renault.  They know who they are dealing with.Charlotte and her entourage came for lunch at 1:15, fashionably late. The greeting was awkward for me. It lasts a long time.  Everybody must kiss everybody. I feel like a dirty old man. Though I tend in that direction, I don’t want to appear to be one. I’m not sure what to do when Charlotte or Delphine kiss me. I’m even less comfortable greeting Guilliame and Vincent. I quickly excused myself to open the wine and I poured wine for everyone. Soon we were all sitting at the table talking, eating and drinking, four middle-aged parent types and four early twenty year olds from 1:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.  Though I missed most of the dinner conversation, I could tell through body language that Christian was holding court and Vincent, Charlotte’s boyfriend, was being appropriately taking in his wisdom and stories.One of the things that kept us together at the table was the food.  Most of it was in salad form.  One was Salad Nicoise, a potato, olives, green beans, tomatoes and tuna salad. Another was a rice and tuna salad, and another was a fruit salad of melons, apricots, nectarines and berries, soaked in peche (peach) liquor.  Then there was the fromage (cheese) and pain (bread) and a variety of cookies that we nibbled on after we finished the main meal.  Oh, I forgot, two types of wine - rouge and rose and lots of it.  That probably helped to keep us together for so long as much as anything else.  The meal was a very pleasant island in our very bad day.After the meal, we began the picture taking ritual.  Marietta and I both thought something was amiss with the setting of the digital camera.  I began to mess with it and I erased two weeks worth of pictures with one push of the menu button.Marietta was still smarting from being the goat in losing the keys incident, so having me to play the goat here was too good to pass up.  “How could you” and so on lasted only a painful five minutes.  She let me off the hook with the words; “the camera should make it more difficult to do.  I have it set right now.”Isabelle came to the rescue.  “I will send you copies of my video.”The final part of this very, very bad day happened when we got home after going to Buis for a glace’. As Marietta and Isabelle were getting their purses out of the trunk of the car, Marietta closed the trunk on Isabelle’s head.Chapter Forty-four: Our “AH HA” On Plateau de VercorsThe day before we left to go to the Vecors Plateau Marietta’s good spirits seemed to unravel. “I wanted to go shopping with Isabelle in Aix or St. Tropéz. Why do we have to get up so early? I know I can say no, but an eight hour hike?”The next day was our trip to the Vercors Plateau. The trailhead was at Col du Rousset.  It was a two-hour drive from Buis. We got up at 7:00 A.M. with the plan to leave at 7:30. “God this was early,” Marietta continued. We left at 8:00 A.M. and arrived there at 10:00 A.M.  The drive was scenic and difficult, with three mountain passes and their accompanying switchblades every 100 meters. “I can’t stand these curves. Isn’t there a better way?” Marietta said several times, followed by, “We will come back a different way. I can’t stand these curves.”When we arrived at Col du Rousset, we were startled by how cold it was.  A front came through in the night.  It had been hot there just as in the rest of France, but now it was fifteen degrees centigrade at the bottom of the mountain, 1300 meters above sea level.  It was less than 10 deg. Centigrade at the top of the mountain at 2,000 meters. “This is too cold. I’m freezing were Marietta’s first words out of the car.”We met Isabelle’s brother, Olive and his wife, Veronique. They had been waiting and were eager to get on with our walk.  This was to be a long four hour walk to a Roman quarry and four hours back, with lunch on the Plateau from out of our collective sac a’ dos.We took the ski lift up the mountain.  This took much of the ordeal out of the assent. But once we got off the lift there was still about one mile of an upgrade before we got to the floor of the Plateau. We walked in a line on the path. Marietta was having trouble keeping up. She was breathing hard. “This altitude is getting to me,” she said.  We stopped and waited. Then when we began to walk again she stopped us suddenly, grabbed her back and said, “I have back spasms.” She took Celebrct that Olive had with him and took my advice to lay flat on her belly and take the yoga cobra pose. This seemed to snap her back into place. Though it didn’t hurt for the rest of the walk, I’m sure the fact that it might was lurking in the back of her mind.Once on the Plateau, the vistas were amazing.  The quarry was on an ancient Roman road from Die to Grenoble. It was easy to get lost on this plateau so we were well armed with a detailed map and a compass.I wish I could describe the sights from this Plateau: the town of Die below, the expanse of vertical rock, unlike other mountains in France.  There were some flowers in the Vercor and some green grass. Sheep were grazing here.  We came on two separate herds accompanied by dogs and shepherds.  About one hour into our walk we came upon a rock garden.  Someone or ones had spent time in this space making rock statues and rock sculptures from the plentiful stones that covered much of the ground here.The site of these rocks created a spirit that was a combination of whimsy and serious thought.  Someone had enjoyed their creative spirit here and had created something that resembled a comic book cemetery.We stopped for lunch before we got to the quarry.  We pulled out of our sac a dos dried mangoes and pineapple, the best yogurt I have ever tasted.  It was German yogurt.   It was creamier, yet tart with the fruit (in my case, peche) as its primary sweetener.  It was better than my french Dannon peche yogurt.  In France there are so many yogurts in the grocery stores to choose from (refrigerator case after refrigerator case filled with different brands) that it is difficult for Veronique to find her favorite version among them all.We had hot tea with a separate cup for each of us, sliced fresh cantaloupe from two large melons, a sack of peaches, nectarines and apricots.  Plastic wrapped fromage (cheese) emerged from the sac a dos I carried along with a small baguette.  After lunch and a short rest, we walked on to the quarry.  In fact, Veronique and I were so intent on our conversation, that we walked past it.  The rocks in the quarry looked much like other rock along the trail, except for their shape.  It took a second look to see that one was in the shape of a broken column. Others were perfect rectangles.  The stone looked like very good, but aged white marble.  We all wondered how such large masses of stone were transported down this mountain.Marietta and I were exhausted when we reached the quarry and ready to return to the comfort of a car seat supporting our backs.  Isabelle and Olive wanted to walk on to the top of the next slope. Veronique was willing to go with them for part of the way.  Marietta and I lay down in the shade and took a nap.  We were glad to begin our trek home when they returned in about one hour.When we were about fifteen minutes on our return, we were passed by a young couple walking briskly in the opposite direction, carrying no packs, only a water bottle.  About five minutes later, we came upon official papers lying in the path.  One was a registration for a car; another was a French driver’s license.  Then I found a Visa card.  Since the name and address were on the driver’s license and the registration, Olive said he would send it to them by mail. Veronique looked at the picture on the driver’s license and recognized the woman of the couple we had just passed.Olive resolved to take these papers and credit card back to the hikers we had passed.  Isabelle and Veronique would wait for him and since Marietta and I were tired, Isabelle suggested that we walk on slowly and they would catch up soon.Since the path was mostly down hill, we walked at a good pace.  The couple proved to be elusive.  They were walking very fast, so there was some distance between them and our party.  When Olive got to the quarry, he couldn’t find them, but since he could see miles in front on the path, he knew that they must be there exploring the quarry. After searching for them for twenty minutes, he found them and the papers did indeed belong to the girl.Well, that was chivalry gone too far for me.  I could never match that.  Olive was indeed a bienveillant, (a good fellow) certainly a peer to Emmanuel.  I was not one of them.  I would certainly have mailed it to her.  I probably would have asked the people camping at a  mountain hut we passed along the way whether or not it belonged to them, but I was so exhausted, it would never have occurred to me to chase her down.  I was disappointed in myself that I was clearly not in the league of Emmanuel and Olive.A note about Olive.  He was also in the class of my cousin, Jerry Vestal, along with Emmanuel as a non-curmudgeon male. He clearly adored his sister, Isabelle, as she did him. He also was clearly happily married to Veronique, who was a beautiful, charming woman, currently learning Italian and Arabic in her spare time.  They met when she was organizing a small theatre group to act in plays for the elderly in nursing homes.  She was a friend of Emmanuel’s who had agreed to be part of the theatre troop and he brought Olive along to join them.  The rest to me seemed “heureux pour toujour” (happily ever after).My cousin, Jerry, could trace his gracious lineage back to my Aunt Margie, through his father.  I did not have a clear path to anyone in my heritage like that.  My father was generous and loyal, but controlling and rigid.  My mother was kind and caring and did many wonderful things for many people like Aunt Margie, Jerry and Olive did, but she was also extremely driven and disciplined.As I was beginning to realize that I didn’t have the genes to belong to this group, I was saved by Marietta who did.“I realize what makes a curmudgeon,” she said.“You do,” I said, amazed.“Yes, it is being pushed beyond your limits.”“I think you’ve got something there.  But how did you come to recognize that?” I wondered.“I’m a curmudgeon, now a grande curmudgeon.  I’ve been complaining now for an hour.  In this beautiful place, nothing is beautiful to me.  I’m mad at Isabelle for making us late.  We won’t get home til past midnight.”“You’re worrying about time?” I said shocked.  “You, who always late, never on time.”“I know it,” she said.  “I sound just like you and the reason is that my feet hurt.  I’m exhausted.  I’ve reached my limit and Isabelle and her brother keep on going and I feel like they think we are wimps.  This is not a pleasant walk.  This is an endurance test and I’m failing.  I didn’t sign up for this.”“Yes, you did,” I said.  “What did you think an eight hour walk in the mountain would be?”“Perhaps I should have known, but that was before I had a blister on my big toe.  That was before I was sunburned, even with sunscreen.  That was before I walked six hours - seven miles one way. And this is more than an eight-hour walk. Now I’m a curmudgeon just like you and it’s because I have reached my limit.”“Yes, that’s it all right.  You do that to me all the time.  I tell you that I’ve reached my limit and you seem to take that as a challenge that you accept.  You use it as an opportunity to prove that your feminine charms work and you push me further, knowing that I can’t resist you.”“Yes I do,” she murmured.“You admit to this!”  I was incredulous. She never confesses to a sin, apologizes easily or admits to mistakes.“Yes, now that I see what happens on this side.  Isabelle is playing my role and I’m playing yours.  The only reason you are not is because you are in better shape than me and I reached my limit before you did.”“Yes,” I agreed. “I think that’s right.  I’m trying to challenge myself to be less of a curmudgeon.  I think for a time we were locked in these roles of you pushing me beyond my limits and me resenting you for that and you resenting me because I was so difficult to push.”“That’s right except it is more than that,” she said.  “It often becomes a power struggle and your answer is “no” to any request or invitation I offer because it comes from me.”“I suppose that has happened,” I acquiesced.  “But you have set so many precedents.  I don’t trust you to respect my limits.”“Well sometimes I don’t,” she said.  “They are silly.  I don’t see why you cannot wait one more minute for us to go when we are at a party and I haven’t finished a conversation.”“The reason for that,” I fired back, “is because I push myself as far as I can, and then some, because I agree with you.  I should be more sociable, more flexible and I try, but when I reach my limit, I want to go.  The fact that I tell you that my limit has passed the point of pleasure, past the point of tolerance and is moving well into pain and you ignore me feels insulting to me.  It feels like you don’t care how I feel, don’t care about me.”“I don’t,” she admitted.  “I think you should be able to handle a social situation, staying longer will give you more practice.  It will do you good.  That’s what I think.”“No, it will do just the opposite,” I said emphatically.  “It will make me determined not to even go and not to trust you in these situations to consider me.”“It’s a pain to deal with you,” she said.  “It’s like having a child pull on your skirt all the time. I don’t feel I should have to put up with that from a grown man.”“And Isabelle shouldn’t have to put up with you complaining about time and exhaustion. She gave you every opportunity to not go. She let you take a nap when you wanted.  She fed you when you were hungry.  You had informed consent, so shut up.  Now how does that feel?”“I get it,” she said.  “That’s what I do to you and you are right this time and I’m wrong when I do it to you.  All limits are stupid and can always be challenged.”I felt gratified that she got this.  “That’s right.  We have a right to our limits.  We all reach a point where we have no more to give.  We are out of gas.  You’ve reached that point and you should take care of yourself and we, who love you, should help.”“I don’t do that for you, do I?” she said.“No, you don’t.  You make me explain myself and justify how I feel.  Sometimes I don’t have a good answer.  Even when I do, I do not want to have to justify myself.  If I do offer a good explanation, it is never good enough for you.”“I suppose not.” She admitted.  “I play Isabelle to your Christian and we get locked into that.”“I’m trying to move out of this crust that confines me into being a curmudgeon,” I said.  “What are you doing?”“I can change, too,” She said defensively.“You mean you think I’m changing?” I said, stunned by her implication.“Well, yes,” she said.  “I think it’s obvious.  Before, you always reached your limits before I did mine . So I never discovered this place before.  It helped me see what you have been saying.”“For years.”“Yes, you don’t have to rub it in when I’m beginning to understand.”“It helps me,” I offered.  “When I can find something in the activity that I want to do.  If I have a personal agenda inside or along with your agenda.”“For example, it helped me go to Italy to have an agenda to go to Cortona and see Frances Mayes’ home that she wrote about tin the Under the Tuscan Sun.  I had a fantasy that I wanted to live out and I did.  That was good for me.  It gave the trip a purpose for me.  It was a bit anti-climatic when we got there.  Frances didn’t come out of her house down her drive with open arms and invite us for a Tuscan dinner.  Ed, her mate, didn’t take me for a tour of his olive groves.  But thinking about that place and Frances and Ed made that trip more interesting for me.““My fantasy trip,” Marietta said, “was that Isabelle and I would go shopping together in Avignon or Aix or Gap or Orange.  Isabelle’s fantasy was to hike from the mountains navel to its crown.  While a thirty minute walk to the crown would be fine with me, an eight hour march was not what I ever imagined.”I came to Isabelle’s defense (a mistake).  “Isabelle is like me.  She likes to go where people are not.  I imagine travel like Hemingway.  I want to go to the out of the way undiscovered place, the place that is de classe (out of favor).  You want to go to the “in” place, where everybody goes.  The crowds don’t bother you.  While Isabelle thinks the Champs Elysses is a silly place to go, that is exactly where you want to go.”“No, not this trip,” Marietta said.  “I wanted to go to St. Tropez’ where my friend Anne gave me the name of neat stores.”“We can’t afford to add on to our house, travel to Europe and a shopping spree for you in St. Tropez’.  My back can’t afford to carry back that stuff in the luggage.  Isabelle is not as materialistic as you.  Why can’t you enjoy the road less traveled, the place that Madison Avenue is not selling?”Now I was really in trouble.  Marietta answered with a strong voice.  “You can have your limits and I’m supposed to accept them only because they are yours, but there is something always wrong with my fantasies.  Just like you wanted to go on your pilgrimage to Cortona, I have always wanted to walk down Fifth Avenue.  I did it.  It was anti-climatic.  I couldn’t afford anything at Tiffany’s, but I bought a dress I still have from Bloomingdales. I’m glad I had that fantasy.  These dreams in realty are never what we imagine, but they keep us going.  You imagine that you will publish this book about our trip, but probably you won’t, but the dream gives you the opportunity to write, and you love that.  Why should we have to justify our fantasies to each other?  Why can’t we help each other live them out?““So you will join me with another woman in a three way sex adventure?”  I wondered.“You are terrible.”“I get your point.  You shouldn’t have to justify your imagination anymore than I should my limits.  If you can respect my limits, I can try to join your dreams with fantasies of my own.  But when walking and looking in the big cities is your dream, you are going to have to help me find a comfortable hotel lobby where I can sit and write.”“I’ll try to do that, “ Marietta replied. “I know how I can have an agenda now.  I’m past being able to look for wildflowers, but this is good physical conditioning for me.  That’s how I can look at it.  I’m glad we had that talk.  I’m beginning to feel better.”We were way ahead of the others by this time and were afraid that we might take the wrong path, so we waited.  It took about forty-five minutes, but they eventually caught up to us.  We walked on further together.  I was intent on getting to the bottom to our car.  I pushed on aware of my sore legs, feet, shoulder, hip, and back.  Olive kept pace with me.  The women fell behind a bit.I felt curmudgeondom coming on again as soon as Olive suggested we stop next to the edge of a cliff and have a snack.  This suggestion had two bad consequences for me.  First, it would mean a longer time before I sat down in the car seat.  And second, I had to look over the edge of the cliff and face my fear of heights and my stomach moving up into my throat. I joined the contest with Olive and lost very quickly as Olive ignored my protests, took off his sac a dos, sat down at the edge of the cliff and began to prepare a snack.  The others followed him to the cliff’s edge.  I lay down back away from the edge, head on my pack, eyes closed, meditating to manage my fear and to pull myself away from a contest with Olive.It seemed easier for me to be tolerant, flexible and a non-curmudgeon when a woman throws down the gauntlet, but when Olive did, I felt my curmudgeon spirit rise.  Or perhaps it was given back to me when Marietta seemed to let it go a few minutes before after she released it by confessing to her curmudgeon feelings.When we reached the ski lift, it was closed. I was so disappointed. I had hoped that the lift might take us down. We began our descent down a path that was marked as a green ski slope. We had walked only a short distance when we saw a wild animal that looked like a small deer, but had only two horns.  It looked liked an antelope, but none of us were sure that antelopes existed in the Alps.  It could have been a wild mountain goat.  It watched us walk for a while and disappeared.Marietta took the animals disappearance as her cue to grab my arm and begin running down the hill. We raced away from the others, like horses running to the barn.  When we got to the car at 9:00 P.M. We flung open its doors and sat down on the soft seats with back support.  AHHH!!!Chapter Forty-five: OUR LAST DAY with Christian and IsabelleWe were exhausted when we got home at about 12:15 A.M.  Christian was awake, glad to see us and not at all surprised that we were late.  I drove home on corkscrew roads in the dark and I tried to control my emerging curmudgeon spirit by going straight to bed.We were amazed that we awoke the next day with some soreness, but otherwise back to-our-old-selves.  And we woke up fairly early for us, around 9:00 A.M.  Isabelle had planned for us to meet with another psychologist about an hour away from Buis. We were happy when these plans fell through. All of us seemed content to sit about the house.  Mercifully, the temperature had moderated and we were able to enjoy the view of the Mt. Venteux with our doors and windows open.We spent the morning reading, writing and snacking.  We ate lunch at 1:30 and sat at the table commiserating how similar our marriages were, how Isabelle and Marietta seemed to push Christian and my limits and how we had become locked in our roles in a constant and repeating power struggle that had become so familiar to all of us.  This discussion lasted until 4:00 P.M., another two and a half hour lunch that extended our life expectancy, according to Christian’s father.We tried to go to a production of a Moliere comedy in Buis. We walked downtown. Christian agreed to go with us. (This was an unusual accommodation in our honor). We couldn’t get tickets so we wandered about Buis until we came upon the restaurant where we ate dinner our first night in Buis. They were full, but they brought out a table especially for us.Our conversation moved back and forth between the topic of our marriages and our struggles in them and our work. Christian was exploring how his idealism and perfectionism empowered his boss to dismiss his vision and his projects. He began imagining ways to collaborate more with his boss, using his boss’s political skills and Christian’s scientific medical expertise.We wandered from our last supper into the town center. There we found a bar that served ice cream deserts and drinks. We split a decadent ice cream sundae, while listening to a jazz band play in the square. During their intermissions itinerant entertainers would do magic or sing for tips.Tired from our attempts to extend this day we walked back home to bed.None of us slept that well our last night.  Marietta and I believed that for us it was because we were afraid of leaving the womb of Isabelle and Christian.  Perhaps our collective discussion upset the equilibrium of Isabelle and Christian’s marriage.  And they, too, may have been afraid to leave us in some way.I had a dream on this our last night in Buis with Isabelle and Christian.  I was trying to make love to my ex-wife.  She wasn’t interested as usual.  She turned to me, crying and said the reason she wasn’t interested was that she was ashamed and frightened.  “I have a penis,” she said.  “I have always hidden it from you.  I was afraid that if you saw it, you wouldn’t want to be with me.  I didn’t think you would accept me if you knew.”I told her that it was okay with me, but I wasn’t sure how I would react when I saw it.  “I’m so glad you can accept me,” she said.  And she pulled me toward her.  I saw it (her penis).  It was hanging on her hip.  It was a curiosity to me, but it wasn’t repulsive.  My excitement was a bit diminished, but I seemed to have enough enthusiasm for continuing the original project.  Then I woke up.For much of the day, I puzzled over what this dream meant.  Of course, I knew my ex-wife had many reasons to be uninterested in me, and this was certainly not the one.  I am certain she didn’t have a penis.Eventually I came to a more comfortable understanding of the dream.  My feminine side has been repulsed by my masculine. There is something about my unique limited self that I think is repulsive. Obviously I have a strong feminine side if I can be successful in my work as a psychotherapist. To date I have been. Clearly I am a man’s man who likes football and has little patience for art. The dream suggests that I am having trouble integrating my masculine and feminine. The dream also suggests that I perhaps can accept these various poorly integrated parts, peut être.Chapter Forty-six: Our DepartureThe next morning while I was in the bathroom, I heard Marietta bark at me to hurry up.  It hurt my feelings for no reason I could think of.  It was not what she said, but it was the way she said it.  The offense was in the tone of her voice.How can I be so easily insulted by behavior that I use so much more often than she, meaning no offense when I raise my voice as she did or when I play bully turn the screw of a critical sarcastic question.  Men tease and communicate affection this way.  My sarcasm and teasing tone is one of the most enjoyable parts of my curmudgeon spirit.  Usually when I take such a tone, I mean no harm.  It’s meant in jest.  I can take back more than I give and am glad for the verbal contest.I am reminded of John Gottman’s, “Four Horses of the Apocalypse” in a marriage.  Humiliating, sarcasm, harsh tones of voices are two of those horses.  Language with these harsh inflections can become characteristic of some relationships.I could see it in an exchange I had with Christian about the luggage that Marietta and Isabelle take on trips.  We were enjoying our righteousness and advertising our suffering at Marietta’s and Isabelle’s expense.  But Marietta only had one bag.  Christian said beginning the contest.“Yes,” I replied.  “But you carried it upstairs.  What did you think?:“That it had rocks in it.”“And empty bags to be filled with more junk for me to tote back,” I said.“Well Isabelle filled the whole trunk with her stuff, I just brought this small bag,” was his response.“And here is the transformer,” Marietta said in a tone that indicated she was getting defensive.  With those words, she handed me this heavy electronic box we bought at the hardware store to transform the French 220-volt current to the U. S. 110-volt current so that we could recharge our camera’s battery.  It was heavy.But probably heavier and more painful were the words Christian and I used to belittle our wives.  Fun is fun.  All humor has a butt of a joke, but too often I have “lovingly” teased Marietta and unintentionally pierced the skin.   Marietta, to survive living with me, has adopted this tone and the result is that we inadvertently become locked in a cycle of teasing that becomes hostility, that can become just plain mean.That’s one of the problems with the curmudgeon spirit.  It is never too far from that line, where fun is no longer funny.  Watching my tone of voice requires a consciousness raising that is hard for me.  My tones just come with my words.  I don’t contemplate them, nor do I censor them.  I just speak what’s on my mind, the truth, with whatever tone emerges.That has always been my defense.  The truth, if you can’t take it, then too bad for you.  I say this and then I watch myself in my work, being careful with my tone and my words.  Oh, I tell the truth.  Psychotherapy without the truth only encourages pathology.  Good psychotherapy always speaks the truth in the context of love, compassion and understanding.  I have done that in my work.  I was beginning to see that I should give Marietta that benefit of my kindness when I speak the truth.The problem has been that Marietta and Isabelle have often ignored their husband’s limits. How we use what defenses Christian and I, both with bad backs, have to protect us in our fears of these bags will demonstrate our ineptness, weakness and inadequacy.  We are afraid of their luggage. We can’t very well say that.  Certainly the weight of these bags was a no problem for either of us at eighteen, but truth be told, it is a problem now.  Marietta and Isabelle both pull their weight and then some.  It is difficult to talk about.  The airlines allow four bags.  But we only took three.Is this what my dreams are about?  I can travel with Marietta if I assert that my back hurts.  Perhaps she will have compassion for me.  But I must tell her about this part of me that is so difficult for me to admit. In this case, it is an old man’s aching back.  If I can have this conversation, perhaps I won’t need so much sarcasm or anger in my tone of voice.Our exit on this last day together felt awkward. There was no way to say our thank-yous and good-byes adequately.  We did our best.  We will miss Christian and Isabelle.  We will miss Mt.Venteux and Mt. St. Julien, the lavender blues and smells, the mountain passes that gave us “Sound of Music” views.  There is no way to thank Madame Facchenerri and her family for their kindnesses.  We left that to Isabelle and Christian.  We should have done more to express our gratitude and to give our blessings back to these people and this land.  We didn’t.  We got in our car and left, feeling the sense of inadequacy and emptiness in our hearts.At the same time, we were ready to return home to our responsibilities, our dog and cat, our home and contractor, our constituents who we need to need us. We had learned a lot this trip.  Marietta and I were grateful for the break in the stereotype of our relationship.  We were pleased with this insight and the compassion we had gained.  The rest of the trip without Isabelle and Christian we expected to be less engaging.Our destination was Villeneure, a suburb across the Rhone River from Avignon. We were staying in a four star hotel there, Hotel Magnanerae. We got a 100 Euro discount rate there. We meandered from Buis to Avignon. We made several stops, looked in on some small town museums and walked through some graveyards. We arrived at our hotel about 5:00 P.M. This hotel was a special place, with a big comfortable lobby, with large fireplaces and comfortable winged chairs, couches, beautiful oriental rugs on marble and tile floors. A courtyard hosted an olympic sized pool surrounded by folding lounge chairs. Inhabiting these chairs were several beautiful women, one of them bathing topless.Our room was one of those on the second floor by the swimming pool. I tried not to stare as I carried our bags past the pool to our room. The dining room here seemed formal and pricey. We decided to walk down the street to the nearest restaurant.The restaurant was in what seemed to be the fenced in backyard of a house. We sat on a concrete iron railed raised patio, looking down on a flower garden dominated by multicolored roses. I had rabbit. Marietta had trout. My rabbit was garnished with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. Marietta’s trout came with a polenta triangle and a spinach soufflé.Chapter Forty-seven: Brocante MarchéThe next day we went in search of the famous French antique Marché, the Brocante Marché in Monteux.  What we found was a small grouping of flea market booths under a large shed, maybe twenty-five in number.  This was a flea market very much like what one might see in the states.  Old pictures, old shoes, old cooking utensils, some furniture, some clothes, some linens.  Marietta bought a monogrammed tablecloth for 30 Euros after haggling.We found lunch at a Marché.  We bought a half of a cooked chicken and some fruit.  What we didn’t have was water.  On our way out of town, we stopped in a small market.  Marietta goes in for a boitille de l‘eau, while I manned our double-parked car.  She returns in a few minutes.  “I met the characters in Peter Mayle’s book,” she said excitedly as soon as she got into the car.  The owner was drinking Pastis with four other men.  This was a dark hole in the wall place.  I had to pay 1 Euro for the bottle in addition to what I would pay for the water.  The owner was rough.  Two women were together behind the counter.  They might have been his wife and daughter.  I don’t know.  Those men were feeling no pain and this is 2:30 in the afternoon on a Sunday.Our other encounter with the French poor was walking back from the Brocante Marché.   An elderly man was shuffling behind a walker, a woman over seventy, presumably his wife, watched him carefully as he struggled.  When we passed them, we looked in an open door.  It was a two-room apartment that we imagined belonged to the couple.  One room contained a made bed and a TV.  The other room was a small kitchen.We drove from Monteux to Isles de Sorgué.  Here three rivers came together in the center of this town.  Main Street was right beside the river.  Shops were on either side of the river.  This must be where the flea market booths from Monteux had come, because there were more antique Tshotsky for sale than I had seen anywhere else. Booths lined the street in front of a river park.  The booths contained products of high quality and much higher prices.  This was an Aspen kind of town, picturesque and expensive.We found a seat on a waist high wall that lined the river for our lunch.  We carved the chicken and the melon into pieces.  We ended our lunch with peaches and nectarines.  We had enough water left in the bottle to wash the chicken and fruit juices from our hands.      As we were engaged in the clean up process, something was happening on the river.  There were two boats, one painted blue and white, the other red and white, that looked like a combination long boat from the Louisiana bayou and the Venice gondolas with a place for the gondolier to stand.  People were bailing out the boats with plastic milk cartons with the handles, the bottoms cut out and turned upside down.  One of the boats began to float higher in the water.  Honda outboard motors were installed in the rear of the boats.  One for each boat.  A crew of eight boarded each boat.  Each crew member was dressed in white with large white trousers, loose in the crotch and legs, ending at mid-calf.The crew of the rouge boat wore a rouge sash around their waist.  In the crotch of the pants on the right side just below the waist, was a thick pad.  The crew of the blue boat wore a blue sash around the waist.  Soon it became clear what this pad was for.  Poles, some ten feet tall, were loaded on the boat.Two boys, about twelve, took their place on the platform in the back of the boat.  Each boy was handed their ten foot staff.  They stood, their pole straight up, balanced it in the palm of the right hand and placed their right hand on the pad in the crotch and secured their hand with the extra cloth in the pant’s midsection.I’m not sure what they called this contest. By this time we understood that they were about to joust with the boat as the horse carrying the two combatants.Suddenly a voice yelled over the loud speaker.  “Prete Rouge?”The driver of the red boat waved his hand to signal no.  He headed his boat down river some more while the blue boat headed up river.  Then they turned to face one another.  The voice from the speaker roared again.  “Rouge Prete.”  This time the driver waved back his assent.“Bleu Prete.”The driver of the blue boat acknowledged yes with his wave.  Then the boats headed slowly toward one another.  By this time the combatants had their poles fixed in the air and they had been equipped with a shield held by the left hand over the chest. The shield was a square box with a square hole that would provide a good target for the lance.  The shield was lashed to the contestant so that when the lance found its target, something had to give. As the boats continued on, one or both contestants would be pushed off their perches into the water.  On the first pass, both found the water.  As the contest continued the Bleu boat took an early lead with the best two out of three.   This champion stayed on to take on two more opponents until a girl who seemed to be older dispatched him easily.  Then she defeated another female challenger and then a second female challenger pushed her into the water.The joists continued for about two hours.  The grandstands set for this occasion were half full with perhaps 1,000 people.  At the end of the day, the blue boat won.  The serious joisting with well practiced strong men were the last matches of the day.  No one was physically injured, but there were perhaps a few bruised egos.   We felt lucky to be sitting along the river just as this event began.It was about six o’clock when we left Isles de Sorgues.  Marietta wanted to go to Fountain Vaucluse.  I was ambivalent, but I acquiesced.  This was supposed to be a place of extraordinary geological interest.  A river poured out of the ground at the bottom of a mountain cliff.  As we drove into town, it became clear that parking was a problem.  Thousands of cars filled several lots.  People walked in droves along the street.  The walk to the fountain was lined like Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge with tourist stuff.  The path to this fountain was clogged with people.  When we got to the place where the water emerged from the ground, it was covered with boulders.I was tired and I needed to go to the bathroom.  My limits were found.  I was quite pleased when Marietta’s limits were found as well.  We drove back to Avignon, agreeing that we had taken on one too many places when we went to Fountaine Vaucluse.I proposed a guideline that I learned from Jerry Lee, a psychologist colleague of mine in Nashville.  She suggests that in any co-parenting decision, that the most conservative parent rules.  In our case, that would mean that we respect the person whose limits have been reached first, or we listen to the fears of whoever is afraid.This rule would require a great deal of trust in Marietta since I was the most likely one to reach a limit first and my fears were more quickly stimulated.  The rule works in Marietta’s favor when we are semi-lost and may or may not stop and ask directions.  If I didn’t abuse Marietta’s trust, this principle might be useful.Chapter Forty-eight: The Rule at Work in AvignonIt would be tested the next day, our first trip to Avignon.  We drove across the Rhone from Villeneuve, found an underground parking lot and lost all orientation when the parking garage road circled us down into its bowels.  We found a parking place, an exit stairway and the light of day easily…but we had no idea where we were.  We were inside the city walls on a street that was not on any map. We went straight, then we turned right.  Then we turned right again.  Then we turned left and we found Rue de Republic, a street on the map.This satisfied Marietta, but not me.  I wanted to trace our way back to the entrance of the parking garage to make sure we could find our way back.  Without our rule, this would have been a fight.  If Marietta won, I would be nervous the rest of the day, wanting to get back to the car to manage my anxiety.  If I won, Marietta would feel resentful that I got my way.  Here the rule won.  It took ten minutes, but we found our way back to the parking garage door that had been our exit that when we returned, would be our entrance to the parking lot.Both of us were pleased with how this rule worked.  Marietta was glad to have a less anxious companion and I was glad to proceed on into Avignon.Avignon, in July, is an amazing city.  There is street entertainment everywhere.  There are plays, operas, recitals, concerts, dances, etc.  This is called the Festival.  There are Festival events and OFF Festival events.  The Festival Events are often expensive.  The OFF Festival Events are free or at most, 15 Euros.Every plaza has several street performers performing simultaneously, each in their own corner of the Plaza.  There may be music in one place, and juggling in another.  In some corners, acts trade off, each doing a thirty-minute set.We were walking along a small street, Rue Tenuhenir, when we heard piano music pouring out of a small storefront.  We saw the sign, Libre, on the door, and walked in.  It was a small theatre with about twenty seats.  The stage was backed with black cloth.  The windows were covered as well.  The light on the stage shone on two young women, one no more than seventeen, holding a violin and watching the other twenty-year-old play the piano.  She was playing a medley of classical standards that seemed to leap from her fingers as if she were a jazz pianist. With no break she changes from one tune to another, from one musical mood to another.  The younger girl would get ready to join in and then the older did not give her an entry point.  Exasperated, the younger one sat down.  When she did get her chance to play, she was brilliant.  Her body and fingers seemed to be swept into the music and she carried us with her.  Turns out these girls were sisters and the pianist was wonderful, but when the younger violinist began to play, you knew why her rival sister would not let her in before.And this was just one of hundreds of moments like this for visitors to Avignon in July and August.  Marietta and I felt as if we had walked into the living room of these sisters while they played and squabbled at the same time. The possibilities for this kind of serendipity in Avignon in July seemed endless to us.  We had dinner that night in an outdoor café, serenaded by flute music from a group of Navajo Indians.We couldn’t help wonder how something like this could be duplicated in the U. S.  First, the artists would need the support of patrons and the government.  These would need to be a place of low humidity and few mosquitoes.  It would be a place that attracted crowds.  We automatically thought of Park City, Utah, which hosts the Sundance Film Festival in January.  Why not a Sundance Summer Festival?  In the summer, the Wasatch Mountains are cool, dry, no bugs and plenty of venues.  The only thing lacking is patrons and government support.  Clearly this is an example of “build it, they will come”.  At least this was our opinion.Chapter Forty-nine: The Beginning of the EndThe night before we left Avignon to return to Marseille and our return trip home, I had a dream.  I dreamed that we came home to our house, which was being remodeled, painted, cabinets installed in the kitchen, floors refinished, etc.  I dreamed that the paint colors were rather vivid, but acceptable to me.  The fans were hung from the ceiling, but there were many more of them than I had anticipated.  One was two fans on one pole.  The higher fan had two very fat blades.  I was not sure what I thought of that.  It was certainly more than I bargained for.  Then there was a tiled roof over a wood box next to the fireplace. This was not in the plans at all.  The tiles were a strange amalgam of European clay tiles, some flat, some semi-circular, some gold, some bright blue, some green, some silver.  This looked awful.  I didn’t know whether to present this or hide this from Marietta.  If I couldn’t hide it from her, I wasn’t sure how to present it.  Oh, I thought we can just paint the roof tiles one color.To me this dream meant turbulence at the boundary.  While I dreaded the demands of our life in Nashville, the house remodeling, my practice, the demands of daily life, I felt prepared to return.  If the worst came, we could paint the tiles.Marietta and I had begun our re-entry fights.  “Why can’t we have some routine in our vacation?” I asked.  This is the first line of a discussion we have had many times.The expected answer was, “Because I want a vacation from routine.”“Your routine is awful,” I replied.  “I understand why you want a break from 6:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. days.  But my routine serves me well.  I feel like I come home from vacation with ten more pounds, higher blood pressure and cholesterol, a higher resting pulse and my back worse.  Vacations ought to be good for you.  I’m not going to eat bread, drink wine or have desert for a week.”“I’ll give up bread and desert, but I want my half glass of wine with dinner sometimes,” Marietta said.“Yeah, but why can’t we get up in the cool of the day at 7:30 or 8:00 and exercise while it feels good, have lunch at noon, take nap til 4:00 or 4:30; then the sun is not so hot and we can go do something else, have a late dinner, go to bed at 12:00.  Why can’t we do that on vacation?  I would feel a lot better if we did.”“Maybe if we stayed in one place for six weeks I could do that,” Marietta said.  “But on vacation I want to avoid routines.  I want to experience new things, go places I’ve never seen before and sometimes that takes the whole day.”“Discipline brings health,” I said.  “And discipline must be served.”“I’m not going on vacation to be disciplined.”I wasn’t sure I could serve discipline on a vacation either.  I sure as hell couldn’t without Marietta’s support, which I would probably never get.  This was not a real discussion.  This was my ambivalence and fear about the end of our vacation.  I felt myself going through the paces of our last day on vacation, a trip to the coast, through the French Marshland, cowboy and wild horse country, home to bullfights, churches that looked as if they came from Spain, herds of people on the beach, hot.  I clearly wasn’t interested.  I wanted to go home.  I was just like a horse headed back to the barn, anything in my way was an obstacle, not a resource.I could tell how much I valued home by the fears that came into my head.  I was afraid that the mediation between the British Airways ticket counter employees and their airline would strand us, even though the mediation wouldn’t begin for two days.  And it was only mediation, not a strike. I suddenly felt claustrophobic in my hotel room.  I was afraid there might be a fire and I looked carefully at the hotel evacuation route.  I was afraid I wouldn’t sleep.  I was afraid I would sleep through the alarm.As we were leaving, I was angry at the French for speaking French.  I was angry at the French bureaucracy.  I was angry at my own ignorance.  The best thing about all this was that I knew that my anger had little to do with Marietta.  It had to do with loving my home, my country, my town, my state, my friends, my clients, my house, my backyard.  I wanted to be there now.  Being away from home for almost a month in a foreign country where the language was not mine, the road signs were unfamiliar, where I knew two people out of millions, had lost all appeal for me.  Avignon was nice, but…And this is perhaps the best part of the trip. This temper, this fear of mine tells me about what I love about home.  I love my secretary, my bedroom, my dog, and even my cat.  I love the home we are completing; the friends I want to have over for dinner, the long conversations with food and wine that will be in English.  I love my church, my colleagues at Vanderbilt. I love the Community Psychologist Journal that I sometimes contribute to.  I love Nashville.  I love my family.  I love my trees, those in my yard, on my land and those that hover over the streets of towns and cities all over the south.  I am curious about what this unusually cool wet spring and summer in Nashville will do to our usual beautiful fall colors.I want to get back to my story, my client’s stories.  I want to read about Titans football.  I want to catch up on the Nashville news.  I want to hear voices of my friends laughing and crying.  I want to learn what happened to the court case I testified in before I left.  I want to see what the flowers are doing in our garden.  I even want to hear the bad news from our contractor about how this remodeling project is coming.I realize that my grandfather was right.  That the secret to happiness was loving what you have to do.  And I do.  I love my obligations at home.  I love my clients.  I am pleased and honored that they need me.  I am excited to sit in my therapist’s chair.  I am eager to catch up with the couples who consult me.  It is a privilege for me to do what I do.  I listen in my mind to the American Airline pilot announce that, “We realize you have a choice in air travel and we appreciate your choice to fly with us.”I realize my clients, friends and family have many choices and I am blessed they chose to include me in them.There are many things I do not admire about my country.  I dislike the swagger and arrogance of the Southern American male’s accent and posture.  And especially the sound of my male southern voice trying to speak French is first among those things I dislike.  I don’t like my country’s sense that everything is a crisis. We must go to war before summer in Iraq.  We can’t wait for diplomacy.  We will miss our window of opportunity.  This is silly nonsense in a country like France where history is measured in thousands of years, not decades.There are, though, many things about my country that I do appreciate.  In France I saw very few people of color.  In Nashville, I see the colors of many races.  Though France and other European countries encourage their people to speak many languages, I don’t think, they do as good a job at appreciating and including people of color in their culture as we do.  Not that racism and prejudice isn’t a serious problem in our country. It is, but we are trying and we are improving and we are the better for that.Another thing I love about my country is that we Americans do not give up easily.  We use rules like a good rabbi does.  We appreciate the spirit of a rule and bend the letter to serve the spirit.  That is why we can change things. We can make decisions.  Though we have committees, we don’t have quite so many, I think.  Our discussions about decisions don’t last quite so long.  Though I wish we would have more of a sense of history, I’m glad we still have faith that we can make a difference.Chapter Fifty: Journey’s EndWhen we got home it was Thursday, July 31. It took a day for us to recover from the almost twenty-four hours in transit. We invited our friend Ellen McPherson for Sunday brunch. Ellen brought her dog Max to be a friend to our dog Greco. We took them for a short walk in the neighborhood and then sat down to eat. As you may recall Max is a 120 lb. German Shepherd. Greco is a 60 lb. waterdog. Greco loves to run circles around Max until Max puts him in his place. Once our dogs had established order between them they settled under our feet at the table on our back porch.“Tell me,” Ellen began, “what was the most interesting part of your trip?”Marietta answered first, “I loved Avignon, its history, the theatre, street performers, museums, the art. Everywhere in Avignon there was a spectacle.“How was it to spend two week with another couple? What were their names?” Ellen asked.“Christian and Isabelle,” Marietta answered. “It was good. It didn’t go as I imagined. I thought I would identify and ally with Isabelle. And I did especially at first. But by the end of the trip Christian had grown on me. I think I understood him better because I embodied his complaining self on the Vercour Plataeu trip.”“What do you mean?” Ellen asked.“Isabelle warned us this was an all day hike and I agreed to go,” Marietta said, “but I didn’t understand why we had to leave at 7:30 in the morning.”“That was her first of many complaints,” I said.“And I didn’t understand why we had to drive on back mountain roads with switchbacks and curves that made me want to throw up. And I didn’t know we wouldn’t get back to our car until 9:00 P.M.  And I could go on. I complained about these things during the whole trip just as Christian would have done if he had gone.”“David that sounds like how I would have expected you to behave,” Ellen said.“Me too,” I answered.“David was so proud we changed roles. I became the curmudgeon and he the cajoling good natured participant.”“I was in a little better shape than Marietta. I wasn’t as tired I don’t think.”“So what was the most interesting part of your trip?” Ellen asked.“Our time with Isabelle and Christian was a rich experience,” I said. “Second to them the most interesting part of the trip was me.”“Oh really,” Ellen said sarcastically. “I remember your traveling mantra to be ‘everywhere you go you are still there’?”“Exactly,” I responded. “But I don’t think I understood what that meant until this trip. On our last trip to Europe I learned how to be a better traveling companion for Marietta and that was good. Before that trip I wasn’t aware of how my behavior affected her. This trip I learned about myself. I was the subject of my inquiry this trip, not Marietta. I did not focus so much on our relationship. Rather I watched myself and how I responded to many emotions that were a part of this trip. I’m fifty-seven. I’m fairly well defined as a person. I know my reflexive emotional responses and I know how hard it is for me to manage these character reflexes. On this trip I was able to stand back from myself and watch me struggle with me. It helped that I saw Marietta and Christian struggle with some of the same issues.”“You are right when you say everywhere you go you are still there. Watching one’s self in unfamiliar contexts with new people can be a fascinating study. Travel makes this possible. The hypnotic routine of my daily life makes it very difficult. A shift in culture, language, people, places, daily rhythms gave me a perspective on myself that I could not have found any other way.”“That sounds like work,” Marietta said. “I don’t travel to take a course of study. I go to get a vacation, to stay up late and sleep as long as I want, to stroll unfamiliar streets and eat meals that give me new ideas about preparing food. I want to read a novel set in the place I’m visiting. I want to talk with local people and get a feel for how their lives are different, maybe better, than mine.”“That sounds like a pretty full agenda,” Ellen said.“I guess it is,” Marietta admitted.“Didn’t you work hard on this trip?” I asked. “Our twelve hour hike on the Vecor Plateau comes to mind; your attempts to get a transformer so you could re-charge the camera battery; coping with me killing 186 stored pictures in our camera, dealing with feeling out of control and inside Isabelle’s agenda and I’ve said nothing about compromising with me.”“I guess I did, but it didn’t feel like the same kind of work I do in Nashville. I wasn’t deciding a child custody dispute.”“And that’s my point,” I said, “you were, I was and we were out of our element, but we brought our psyches with us and we could observe them outside our regular life.”“I get it,” Marietta said. “Everywhere you go you are still there and that gives you a chance to experience yourself in a new way. You are not different. You are the same. You just see yourself differently.”“David,” Ellen said. “I can’t believe that I hear you advocating for travel.”“Me either,” I said.“As we’ve been talking,” Marietta said, “I’ve been thinking about why travel is harder on David than me. He says that as a boy he wanted to travel, but traveling as a child, teenager, or college student is different than traveling as a man. I think about that man David told me about traveling with his family to Europe. David was in line in the Albuquerque airport and he simply listened to a few words in the bantering conversation of this couple and he knew from their tone of voice and the flavor of the tension between them that they were traveling abroad. The husband he described felt responsible for his family. He was trying to provide for them and protect them. He was afraid one of them would lose their ticket or passport or get caught up in security or any number of strange things that he could not foresee.“I’m sure David feels responsible when he travels with me. There is no telling what I will lose or forget. And David feels poorly prepared to advocate or protect me. He feels responsible, when he shouldn’t but he can’t help that about himself. When he cares he gets protective. That’s David.”“That’s true for a lot of men,” Ellen said. “That makes sense why travel turns them into curmudgeons.”“I appreciate the defense,” I said. “It is very unexpected and welcome. For me my two traveling demons are fear and anger. Actually it is just one because my anger comes to me to cover my fear.”“I don’t understand that,” Ellen said.“Anger and fear are both defensive reactions against threat,” I said. “One tells me to fight and the other prepares me for flight. The source of these two defensive reactions is the same. It is some perceived threat, which stimulates fear which, when I feel strong enough, becomes translated into anger or some form of attack posture, hence the sarcastic, complaining curmudgeon.”“The same thing happened to me,” Marietta said. “On our forced march in the Vecor Plateau.”“Forced March?” I said.“See I’m still angry about it. But I’m not angry at anyone but me, really. And I’m angry because it was so hard for me and I was too tired to enjoy it. It was my fear and discomfort that turned me into a complaining bitch or what David calls a curmudgeon.”“Oh when you use the ‘B’ word I see this as a much more universal phenomenon,” Ellen said. “I become a complaining sarcastic editorial bitch when I feel controlled by some man’s agenda.”“Yeah,” I said. “And I feel the same way when controlled by Marietta’s agenda and I have to be the provider and protector on some trip that brings me more anxiety than excitement. While she can play the damsel in distress role well I can’t. So the first thing I had to do to get out of this position was find a reason independent of what Marietta wanted, for why I wanted to go on this trip. When I did that it became easier to move beyond being a curmudgeon. But when that happened I became a competitor for what we would do. I preferred to go on walks on mountain plateaus than go shopping in St. Tropez.”“Well that was a problem,” Marietta said, “but I would much rather have an enthusiastic travel companion than a grousing complaining one. I would rather negotiate with you about what you want to do and what I want to do than have you hating everything we do.”Since this breakfast with Ellen I have thought a great deal about my father, my curmudgeon model and my cousin Jerry Vestal. I remember one time when my father used this protection justification so stupidly that I promised myself I would never behave like that. I was ten years old. It was 1956. Our family was returning home at night from Little Rock on old highway 67. My father was driving our used 1953 Cadillac. He was forgetting to dim his lights when cars approached him from the opposite direction or he would forget to dim his lights when he came upon a slower car. After several times my mother could no longer hold her tongue.“Bill,” she said, “dim your lights. You are blinding the other drivers with your bright lights.”My father’s reply was, “I am driving this car. I have my family to protect.  I don’t give a damn about those other cars. They don’t have my wife and children in them. I have to see to drive this car ad protect my family.”I’m not sure whether or not my curmudgeon defenses and justifications have ever been that extreme. I hope not. I do understand now that my father was afraid and that his fear and narcissism combined to create a very difficult man sometimes.  At other times my father’s kindness and compassion created exemplary behavior that built dams for his community literally saved a life in his defense of a woman charged with killing her battering husband and many other profoundly generous and kind deeds.I contrast my curmudgeon genes and behavior with the genes and gracious kindness of my cousin Jerry Vestal. I knew his grandmother, his father. I know his sister Jan. They are all cut from the same characterological cloth. It was the same cloth as Isabelle, her brother, Olive and her cousin, Emmanuel.I admire them, but I am not like them. I am like Christian and my father. This trip confirmed this for me. It happened on the Vecor Plateau when I watched Olive hike back with the lost credit card and driver’s license to find that couple. I am not that kind. I never will be.I would have gone back to help Marietta, Isabelle, Olive or Veronique. I would gladly paid for dinner for all of us. My generosity seems limited to my people, to people I love and know. It does not extend very far into the unknown. If I am to like and value myself I have to discover things that are good in this spirit.It is good that I can look in the mirror and tell the truth about myself. This trip helped me see more in my mirror. I’m grateful for that. I remain a work in progress. I am uncomfortable with the place I am in this work. I have a lot left to do. My goal is to know, understand, accept, forgive and love myself by the time I die.  Travel has been especially useful to me so far.This trip occurs in the context of another one. That journey is so pervasive that it is both obvious and easy to ignore. It is the twenty-year marital journey of me and Marietta. Yes, travel is a way of learning about yourself and the relationship s hip is also a way to study yourself. My twenty years with Marietta continues to surprise me with new information about myself, about her and about us. This trip to France, our conversations with Isabelle and Christian were profoundly rich for me because of Marietta. Of all life’s journeys this one with Marietta has been… I don’t have the words to say.EpilogueTravel to be with family is a different kind of travel. It too is often filled with a combination of excitement and fear, excitement for the potential of understanding and validation that only family can give and fear of the intense pain of rejection that can only come from family. Experiences with family are annotated and remembered like few others. We learn our dearest most painful and rewarding lessons from our family. I have just returned from my nephew Carter’s wedding in Dallas, Texas. Being with family gave me a chance to reconsider many of the questions I had about myself and Marietta in France.It has been over three months since we got back from France. Preparing my book to be read has kept Isabelle and Christian et al in the front of my brain. I have continued to be puzzled by several things: Why do I behave this way? Do I enjoy making someone miserable? What is the downside or darkside of kindness? How can someone tell whether they are a curmudgeon or a paragon in their relationship? Why do kind people love curmudgeons? What should curmudgeons do to change? What should paragons do to change? How can couples work together to change?In Dallas I stayed with my cousin Jan and her husband Fred and spent some time with my cousin Jerry. I hoped my time with them would help me answer some of these questions. As you may remember my cousins Jan and Jerry are my nomination as my family’s rivals to Marietta, Isabelle, Olive and Emmanuel as kind paragons.At the kitchen breakfast table while we were eating toast and our cousin Carol’s version of Aunt Margie’s fig preserves.  My cousin Jan wondered out loud how us curmudgeons could enjoy making their loved ones miserable. I had no ready answer then. This is my answer now:I like to play, to tease, to contend. As a boy I liked to pull the pigtail of the girl sitting in front of me. I didn’t pull it to hurt her. I did it to get her attention, to make her feel something about me.  Playing with her this way meant I liked her, though I would never admit it. I think Marietta liked this mischief in me.I never thought I enjoyed causing Marietta pain until one day Marietta and I were walking and looking in shops and art galleries in the Jackson. I didn’t want to go, but I went. We were walking around slowly, often pausing to look at something or other. I heard myself begin to joke about some objet d’art that Marietta took seriously. Another Teton, “Oh look at that snow nipple.” Or “That picture of a stream looks so real it makes me want to tinkle.” My juvenile fifth grade jokes were funny to me, the more disgusting and irritating to Marietta the more fun for me. As I watched myself I saw that I was clearly taking the misery and boredom I felt as I walked and looked around the square and I was displacing it onto Marietta. The more misery she felt, the better I felt. Clearly I was being sadistic. After a time Marietta put a stop to it. She told me, “Put a smile on your face and say only positive things for thirty minutes. I’ve had enough.” And she had. And I knew it. She had a point. For me the origin of my sadism tends to come when I feel neglected and my limits disrespected. I’m not sure there is any justification for my worst self, but tired, disrespected and hungry seem to bring it out.So the reason for my sadism is two fold. One it is not often meant to hurt, but rather as an invitation to engage. When it is meant to hurt it is to dissipate my irritation into humor at someone else’s expense.The question that I have been carrying around with me all over France and beyond is: What’s wrong with Marietta, Isabelle, Emmanuel, Olive and my cousins Jan and Jerry. I know what’s wrong with me, Christian, my father and other easily identified curmudgeons. The downside to our personality is there for all to see, but what could possibly be wrong with these good souls?Nothing is not an acceptable answer. Of course I have my own needs to defend my ego and that is one of the reasons that I’m digging for dirt here (surely the biggest). Another reason is to understand the human condition in its various forms. Several theoretical frames in the study of personality suggest that there are a number of different personality styles and that each one brings with it certain challenges.  Our personality styles have two sets of consequences. One set is reserved for us. The other set is for the people who most endure us. The point is that there is no perfect person except maybe one and the downside of being like that guy is crucification. We all present problems to others and ourselves.So what is the downside of kindness? I know one. Kind people are often late. Certainly Marietta exhibits this behavior. She is always late. Christian says that Isabelle is too. Isabelle complained that Emmanuel was usually late. He was late meeting us at to walk the Colorado Plateau.I think I know the reason. Certainly I can say this about Marietta since she has been the primary focus of my study of the kind person. She gives the people she is with all of her attention. She doesn’t leave them until the conversation is over and all parties are satisfied. While the people she is currently with are getting all of her care and concern, the people she has made plans to meet are all but forgotten. She sacrifices her commitment to meet in the future to attend to the person in front of her.  Most people in Marietta’s life forgive her lateness, but these people are usually people who Marietta sees occasionally. Patience with Marietta’s lateness varies directly with how many times she has let them wait for her. I am, of course, the least patient since I am the primary object of this behavior and patience has never been my strong suit.I nominate the tendency to attend to the present and the inhabitants of the present at the expense of the future, as the reason kind people are often late.Another thing that kind people tend to do is they tend to plant a smile on their face and present an optimistic, positive persona to the world. While this may seem like a good thing (and it is for children and for the general community spirit) it takes away the raw material for intimacy. How do you love and care for someone who appears always positive and won’t tell you when they feel down or what you might do that matters to them. It’s in the singer Linda Ronstadt’s song lyrics “Desperado come down from your fences and let somebody love you.” Self –esteem comes to those who can help, who are strong enough to contribute, but who gets the self-esteem with the positive, smiling kind person. They do.We curmudgeons feel guilty for being alive, authentic and saying how we feel and having limits. And this answers the question that I have been asking myself for some time. That question is: What do they see in us? Why do paragons seem to be attracted to curmudgeons? Perhaps it is masochism’s attraction to sadism. Part of the answer is we are available to be known and loved. We provide energy and authenticity. We give them a mission and allow them to avoid forming their own identity and discovering their own calling. They look to us to fill up that space. We pains the in the ass are real good at that.Curmudgeons are rarely lost. It’ s not that we do not fail. We do. But our failure often happens because we talk people into things they really don’t want to do and we do not listen to their hints that they are not getting their needs met.Another part of the answer came to me at my nephew Carter’s rehearsal dinner when Carter toasted his bride this way. He said, “I come from a long line of pains in the ass.  In the dictionary if you looked up the definition of angel you would see the picture of my grandmother, Elizabeth McMillan. If you looked in the dictionary for pain in the ass, you would see a picture of my grandfather, H.W. McMillan and then there is my father (my brother Toney) and then there is me, Carter. I come by my talent to be a pain in the ass honestly. My grandmother was an angel and my mother is wonderful. As lucky as my father and grandfather were to get these women to marry them, I’m even luckier to get Elizabeth McCarty to be my wife.”I often think men get cast as the pain in the ass husband in contrast to the angel, paragon wife. Certainly Marietta has had the role of the somewhat long suffering one in relation to me. The same is true for Isabelle and Christian. Perhaps paragons need curmudgeons.I have a feeling that it is the same for all exceptionally kind people. They need an alliance with someone who contends, who opposes, who provides limits. They need someone who won’t let them go another extra mile. It is a relief to them to say my mate says we can’t go. Though I don’t know I would guess that Jerry’s wife Sharrylon plays that role for him and Jan’s husband Fred plays that role for him and Jan’s husband Fred plays that role for her and Olive’s wife Veronique helps Olive set limits and Emmanuel’s wife Caroline might do the same for him.Why do Paragons put up with Curmudgeons? One answer is that we jerks have energy and a sense of direction with ambition, clear wants, likes, and dislikes.I would guess that kind people have a difficult time discovering what they want to do when they grow up. While we curmudgeons like to contend and tease, you paragons like to please and nurture. Kind people are so focused on others and on pleasing others that they have difficulty knowing what they want and defining their objectives.In Dallas my cousin Jerry told me about himself as a young man. After Jerry graduated from college he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be a minister or not. He dropped out of divinity graduate school, then went back again, took a parish, left the parish, finally after several years went to school and got his C.P.A., moved to his childhood home and put out his C.P.A. shingle. This was never his dream, but it supported his family for the past twenty-five years.In my first marriage I had the role of paragon and my wife had the role of curmudgeon. I was trying to please and constantly failing. I was in law school at SMU. She was unhappy with my career choice and unhappy with Dallas. I was easily persuaded (and that is one paragon downside) to drop out of law school and return to undergraduate school to beef up my psychology background as well as my GPA, while she pursued graduate work in religion at Vanderbilt (which happened to be in Nashville, Tennessee, thirty minutes from her family). While I feel in her debt because I now have a career as a psychologist because of her, I was lost following her, letting her define me instead of me defining myself.So there it is. Kind people like Jerry, Jan, Isabelle, Olive, Emmanuel, and Marietta can avoid the job of knowing and defining themselves. They can be easily taken up by the charisma of others. They can avoid responsibility for their own happiness. They can become a victim and enjoy the entitlement that suffering gives them.I sent Jan and Jerry a draft of this book. They weren’t sure who was the curmudgeon in their marriages. They thought my distant picture of them as paragons might not be accurate. They wondered how one would know which side of the paragon/curmudgeon line you were on. Here’s how you can tell. Do you say “no” more often than your partner? Are you the one who is reluctant to go? Do you wear the black hat for the family by being the one who sets the limits and tells the truth that is hard to hear? If your answer is “yes” to the preceding questions, you are cast in the curmudgeon role in your relationship.So what should we curmudgeons do to be a positive force in our relationships? We curmudgeons should not apologize for our vitality and the clarity of our feelings. We should, however, take responsibility for our feelings, instead of passing on our negative feelings to those closest to us, like a bad cold. We should pay attention and create space for our paragon partners to tell their feelings and discover and live out their personal dreams.Us pains in the ass are hiding too. The paragons don’t say what they feel. It seems that we curmudgeons do say what we feel, but we really don’t. What we do is hide our fears under our sarcasm and irritability. Our unpleasantness is a cover for our feelings of inadequacy. A good offense is our defense. So we become offensive. The antidote for this is to speak our fears out loud, to confess that we don’t know how, aren’t strong enough for or will have to depend on others for help. That’s hard for us. When we do this we lose our image as the strong, capable person. We are vulnerable to be called a wimp and humiliated, when we already feel enough shame. It is the shame that our difficult personality is protecting us from, by shifting the focus away from us and onto the flaws of someone else. Often we are correct. Our partner will not tolerate our fears and weakness. They won’t allow us to have our limits. When that happens we take cover back under our curmudgeon shell and everybody loses.Paragons have a job to do too. They must come out from hiding behind their pleasant, smiling face. This is not to say that their attempts at creating a pleasant atmosphere with their best efforts aren’t appreciated. Their smile is an effective weapon as well as a shield. It keeps their enemies off balance. As Marlon Brando in Godfather I says, “You never tell your enemies the truth.” But what about your friends? And especially your mate? They need to know how you really feel in order to love you. Your job is to tell them. Paragons, go get some of that curmudgeon spirit. Complain. Give us curmudgeons a chance to play your role sometimes. It is your job to define yourself. No one else can do that for you. You must be the one to declare what you want. If you don’t you will never get it, whether it is a raise or good sex.While us curmudgeons have got to put aside our narcissism and make room for you to want and complain, you paragons have to have the courage to break your paragon mold and get down in the dirt. The earth is a muddy mess and the source of life. Come on down. Get dirty. Join us curmudgeons.Curmudgeons are right. Life is a bitch. We are all going to die. Though curmudgeons won’t admit they are afraid, they are. We need each other to face the traumatic problems of living. Our collective job is to unlock ourselves from our well rehearsed characterological postures and to try on new ones, to unburden ourselves and our loved ones by changing our personality routines.We can do this. We can help each other. We all have it in us. Gloria, my secretary, (another kind person) needed me to take some heavy boxes from her trunk. As I was taking them out she almost slammed the door on my foot. She laughed. If she had hurt my foot it wouldn’t have been funny, but the prospect that she might have was. All humor has a butt of a joke. Come on you paragons, loosen up, laugh. And when you do you are being sadistic. Someone is the object of your humor. Sometimes it can hurt. Often it does not and the object of the joke can often laugh along with you. No harm, no foul. And I laughed with Gloria about the potential mishap because it was funny.Marriage and family can confine us in these tightly defined role definitions of pains in the ass and angels. And marriage and family can also support us to change and grow beyond our stereotypes. Traveling to come together as a family (as I have just done for my nephew Carter’s wedding) can give us the opportunity to see ourselves in others, to see ourselves as others see us and to experience ourselves in the challenge that loving and being loved by our family gives us. That challenge is the challenge to grow, learn and change because they love us and we love them.Gandhi once said, “If we all took an eye for an eye we would all be blind.” The point of this epilogue has not been to diminish the paragons of the world or to humiliate us curmudgeons. As I suggested by my story about my first marriage while I was in law school, at various times in different relationships we can play a variety of roles. These roles can become engrained in our characters. These roles often become opposing postures. Opposition to our character tendencies can be a good thing and it can be a damaging painful thing. Often these opposing postures become the well-documented relationships like Nobel laureate John Nash and his wife in A Beautiful Mind. Our idiosyncrasies integrate with the opposite idiosyncrasies of another.  This integration binds us together in a symbiotic dependency postures and at the same time challenges us to grow beyond them.Neither posture is right or wrong. One is not better or worse. It is important for us to know them and to use the wisdom of our worthy opponent to complement and to provoke us. The ways our mates are different from us can become more than a source of conflict. Our mates can become resources and mentors to our souls.Marriage does change relationships. It is like a vortex drawing in two people and merging them into one in a ceremonial event. Then right after that event the vortex that drew these two people together transforms into a centrifuge and the two mates suddenly find themselves on opposing sides. Questions always seem to have two opposing answers: How do we spend Christmas? Can we afford to buy the new car I want? Do we vacation at the beach or the mountains? Are we ready for children?Our best friend lover companion and mate becomes the opposing voice in all our conversations. Marital roles develop, thus curmudgeon and paragon. I’m sure there are others.Travel shakes up these roles and gives us opportunities to try on new ones. In our new postures we see what our mate was seeing when they played this part. We change perspectives. New meanings can emerge. Travel can teach us about ourselves and can transform relationships.[1] Isabelle wrote the following reply. “A comment about your perception of Isabelle pride in her children. I know it. I don’t parade with it, I just answer questions about them when they are asked.”[2] Isabelle upon reading this replied. “I had the same thoughts when I visited the forests in the U.S. I was disappointed not to find nice woods to hike in anywhere when we visited the Smoky Mountains or other places. The States are probably too big to afford such a public investment. That is why we are paying so much taxes in France, this is part of it.[3] Isabelle corrected my french as follows. “Mouille jus quo os should be written: “trempé jusqua'aux os” ou “mouillé jusqu'aux os” but we rather say trempé. My first year French text must not have used the preferred idiom.[4] Isabelle reminded me that Marie Antoinette was married to Louis XVI. I knew that but he is not as important or famous as she is. I omitted him on purpose.[5] Upon reading this Isabelle asked: “When you say a healthy relationship does it include love?” She commented further, “My children are concerned that a love relationship not be reduced only to the sexual part. That means a lot for Thomas and Charlotte. I think this makes sense don’t you?”Yes of course I do. Once again these children disclose their good sense.

Hrumph Goes to Spain

Chapter One: Journey Into Narcissism The beginning of this pilgrimage started in the same place, Bongo Java. As you may remember from our last book, this was the place Marietta suddenly burst out sobbing with our good friend Ellen McPherson as the audience/therapist when I mentioned that I wished we could go to Cortona when we went to Italy.Since then I have become more aware of my fear of travel, especially foreign travel and Marietta has become more accepting of my seeming lack of interest. It is not that I’m not interested, well perhaps it is. It is that I like the familiar and am frightened to leave the safety of my Nashville identity and community of knowns, some people who care about me and some who don’t, and go to a place where nobody knows me and nobody but Marietta cares.However, I remember my ten-year-old self, whose back did not ache, who wasn’t afraid of anything and who wanted to see the world and all seven of its wonders. In the spirit of that ten-year-old boy, I begin to trust that there are beds in Spain that my back will appreciate.Back to Bongo Java. It’s the same scene; the only difference is Greta, my new dog, is there instead of Greco, my old dog. We three sit outside under the same giant trees, comfortable with the New York Times on the table for whoever is waiting, while the others arrive or while the others are in line ordering and the one waiting (me) holds our table.This time the conversation is focused on Ellen’s family and Marietta’s mediation practice. When Spain was mentioned, Ellen reassured us that we would have a great time. I wished I had echoed her sentiments but at least I did not do what I did at the same place before our last trip, which was to play the long-suffering husband put upon by his wife who demanded that he leave the comfort of his bed and go to places where he didn’t speak the language and where the beds and the walking and looking were guaranteed to hurt his back and he was guaranteed to complain loudly.This time I simply acknowledged my fear and reminded all present that once I arrived at our destination on all of our foreign travels that my fears calmed and I enjoyed our trip. I was hopeful that would be the case this time.Ellen wished us well and we parted from her without any drama. She did, however, email a warning that each of us should carry our own water on the hikes because we were likely to become separated talking to various members of the group and walking at different speeds.As we prepared for our trip, I campaigned for a new form of travel, simple travel, where we each took only the barest of necessities. For me this meant three shirts, two pairs of pants, the pair of walking shoes I would wear on the plane, a small camera, three pair of underwear, three pairs of socks, my iPhone, a razor and toothpaste, a rain jacket, water bottles, a backpack and little else.I was hoping, begging, for Marietta to also take only the bare necessities, not her two large bags plus her computer bag, which I would feel obliged to carry, even though she promised that she would. To my surprise she did her best to accommodate me. She took only her small rolling bag filled until it looked more like a ball than a rectangle, plus an overflowing purse. This was a great improvement and I presume a great sacrifice and my back appreciated it.So much of my curmudgeonness revolves around my back or that’s my excuse. I’m not sure which. Marietta has her ailments too. She has cramps in her calves in the middle of the night, but only in Nashville.  She has problems sleeping but only in her bed. Could this be the reason she wants to go somewhere all the time? I would think getting away from me was the reason except that she wants me to go as well.The day arrives. We have both bought special hats to take to protect us from the sun. As we leave home I am wearing my hat which Marietta says is an Indiana Jones hat and she is wearing a hat that reminds me a great deal of Ms. Marple. So it would appear that our pilgrimage was to solve a crime or find the Holy Grail.A word about my pilgrimage. I try to approach a trip such as this one to Spain for two weeks as a spiritual journey, a chance to observe and experience myself in a strange environment. In my last two such pilgrimages with Marietta, my focus was on becoming a better travel companion and to that end I used Francis Maye’s book Under the Tuscan Sun as my model for how to observe and experience Italy.This time my book was Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. National Public Radio reviewed this book and interviewed its author. The interviewer compared Lerner to Hemingway, each were examples of American men of their time in Spain as expatriate writers interpreting and describing the intersection of American male culture with the Spanish culture.I am a big fan of Hemingway as a man or role model for how to be a man. However, this is how the culture of the late 20^th century portrayed him. He was the quintessential modern man, like John Wayne, John F. Kennedy, Cary Grant, Mickey Mantle, and other larger than life heroic figures of that time.These men were my role models and heroes. And I am not ashamed of many of the qualities that I took from them. These modern men don’t fit well in a postmodern world. They are exposed in Woody Allen’s movie Midnight in Paris as narcissistic self-absorbed misogynists.  In the postmodern world they are laughable clowns, not admirable men.The companion of Lerner to Hemingway suggests that Lerner represents the postmodern American man who is best seen and understood when placed in a foreign context. I found that to be so as I read Leaving the Atocha Station. In the last part of this essay I will have more to say about this and how this relates to my pilgrimage. Back to the trip.Our first misadventure occurred to us on the way to the airport. Just as we turned onto I-40, Marietta asked if I had my passport. I did. Did I have our money? I didn’t. Then my cursing at myself began. We returned home and retrieved the money.Our second travel mishap was in the Nashville Airport. We were checking in and Bonnie Humphries, who drove us to the airport, walked in escorted by a police woman. It seems I had not left her the car keys and she was unable to drive away.With that resolved we got through security without further events and headed toward a food counter for lunch, except Marietta didn’t. She went to get a book and I went to order lunch, irritated. Marietta often does this to me and I am often left waiting in line with no Marietta paying for mine wishing to pay for hers and she’s not there. Or worse getting on the plane without her. And that was my specter, me on the plane going to Spain without Marietta, my Spanish speaking guide, companion, babe and security blanket.But once again, at the last minute, Marietta arrives, orders and I am able to pay for us both. We get on the plane together and we are off to Spain via Dallas, Texas, DFW airport.In Dallas we came upon Pam Taylor, an A-list divorce attorney on her way to Paris and Bordeaux for two weeks. She is flying first class and she invited us to wait with her in the Admiral Club. Seated in soft chairs in a high ceiling room with nice bathrooms adjacent, we waited together, talked shop (I did not blurt out how awful I thought she and the A-team attorneys made divorces). But you got to give her this. She was traveling 1^st class to Paris and Marietta and I were to be huddling up together in the cheap seats on our flight to Madrid, Spain.Our packed to the gills airplane took off on time. Our seats were terrible, the food barely tolerable and I got only a little sleep. Marietta got no sleep. I vowed to pony up the cash for 1^st class on our next trip. I was sure my back would pay for this nine hours in a cramped seat. But when we emerged from the plane at 9:30 Madrid time, my back felt pretty good.We were not so exhausted as we had imagined. We moved through customs baggage and to a bus to the city center with ease. We got off the bus, walked half a mile pulling our rolling bags to Hotel del Arts. We checked in, explored the neighborhood and jumped on a red double-decked city open bus for a tour of historical Madrid.Maybe its Spanish pigeons but I saw this pigeon coming out of the sky diving over the bus to its landing spot on a light pole next to the street and I never saw such a beautiful graceful flight and landing. Surely the pigeon represented how I felt about our arrival in Spain.The city was filled with very old buildings and statues. I don’t know why I despised the Catholic monks and nuns who were memorialized everywhere or the blood of a famous priest that is kept sacred in a church and on a certain day in July transforms from a dried coagulated solid to a red liquid and back again to solid the next day. Also low on my list were the statues of Spanish Conquistadors who enslave Indians and stole South America’s gold with the blessing of the Catholic Priests who came to South America to destroy the native culture. The history of Spain seems filled with religious duplicity and evil at every turn, the most recent example being the Catholic Church’s support of Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in which 500,000 Spanish died and horrible acts were committed by all sides, mostly against civilians.It was cold when we arrived, highs in the fifties, lows in the low forties. I immediately wished that I had packed warmer clothes. It was disorienting for me to realize that I left on Tuesday in Nashville and arrived on Wednesday. That first day was spent walking the Paseo del Prado, a beautiful avenue with a park in the middle. I found a hooded cotton navy blue jacket with a red bull emblem on it which zipped in front. For the next six days this was essential daily wear. By the end of my stay in Spain the temperature was in the nineties, the cotton jacket was in the drawer and we were wearing shorts.At this stage of the trip I was on a pilgrimage with no sense of purpose. Though I’m a spiritual skeptic, I have found it personally useful to assume or at least hope God has a purpose for me to be on this trip. So I wonder what the purpose might be for me to leave the comfort of my dog and my bed, spend money, endure the discomfort of second class travel, come to a place where I don’t speak the language and wander about. I was curious what the theme of my pilgrimage would be.Our two days in Madrid were a surprise to me and Marietta. We never thought we would be across the street from Picasso’s most famous painting, Guernica, exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofia.Like Hemingway, Picasso is another man I despise. It’s a shadow thing.  His ambition and love of his art seemed to drive him to be cruel to women who loved him and friends who did not agree with him. His biographers depict a great artist and a cruel narcissistic man.I was prepared to see this famous painting and to dismiss it as childlike drawings on a grand scale of horses, bulls and people by a man who could not paint a realistic picture.This was not what I saw. I saw tormented terrified horse, a bewildered and sad bull representing Spain, a woman with a wounded leg frightened, anguished and determined to push on. The painting did move me to have some sense of the chaos and anguish that came from the bombing of Guernica, Spain and the World War that followed. Franco asked Germany for help in the Spanish Civil War and Hitler and Germany responded by using Guernica, Spain as a demonstration of blanket bombing and its horrendous effect on civilians. Picasso’s wall sized painting was certainly not silly. It carried a message then and it still does today.Madrid Centro was easy to navigate. Several streets were pedestrian only wide streets paved with marble, yes marble. Marble was ubiquitous in Madrid. It was often the floor of public buildings, the sidewalks and the fascia of many buildings, at least six feet up from the ground.Madrid has some inclines but no hills. One could stroll or walk with dispatch as one chooses. Public transportation and walking is the most used method of moving about the city. It seemed to me to be a very difficult city in which to drive an automobile.We loved walking. Paseo del Prado was our most frequented street. As I mentioned earlier, it was more like a park than a street. Dogs were running about freely as their owners strolled up or down the center of the street which was really a park with shrubs, trees and flowers architecturally planted along marble paths and squares. The only drawback to strolling in the center of Paseo del Prado was the smell of dog urine.Marietta’s six week crash course in Spanish paid off. She could talk to anyone. However, there was usually someone about who could speak English. Marietta was rightly proud that she rarely needed a translator.The food in Spain centers around pork. Jambon is a smooth, thinly sliced piece of cured salt pork, cut from the hoofed pork leg. Every restaurant I saw had legs of pork hanging from the ceiling around a bar. Restaurants also served what we would call pork chops. There were some chicken dishes on menus but few beef dishes. The fish dishes offered were usually a combination of fried squid, calamari rings, sardine and shrimp. Tomatoes and or caramelized red peppers were often part of a sandwich or tapa.Tapas were the most frequently served dish. They cost between 2-5 euro. They were small three bite dishes of almost anything you can imagine, usually on a piece of toast or served as a sandwich. On most streets there was a series of Tapa Bars. Patrons walked in the bar, stood, looked at the small kebobs or other options, pointed and ordered. A few minutes later the chosen tapas with their favorite beverage (usually wine, sangria or beer) emerged. And they stood as they ate, drank, and talked to their server or the persons standing next to them.Among the surprises in these bars was that wine was cheap and excellent. Usually two euros a glass. Most people seemed to order wine or what we would call a wine cooler or sangria. Always beer, wine or sangria was cheaper than a coke. A mixed drink was usually five euros.Even with cheap alcohol, I never saw anyone who I thought was drunk.The theme of my pilgrimage began to come together the second night. That day as we emerged from the hotel we walked past an attractive girl handing out flyers for a Flamenco dancing performance. We made reservations and appeared promptly at 9:00 P.M. for dinner and the performance. Marietta and I were at one table and two other American couples from Atlanta were at another table. In front of our table was a stage. Behind were other empty tables, a dance floor and a disc jockey setup.The meal was served first with great ceremony and excellent presentation. The food, not so good. Then the lights went down and a strong voice shouted above rhythmic clapping, drumming, guitar playing and heel stomping. The curtain pulled back to expose two young female and two young male dancers, clapping and stomping accompanied by a woman singer, a man drumming the box he sat on and a guitar player.There was nothing subtle about this art form. The music was loud, the costumes bright, the dance postures pompous and demanding of attention. My mind began to combine Picasso’s arrogance with the bravado of the music, the dancing, the pictures of bull fighters and I saw images of narcissism everywhere I turned.  We left after the performance, returned to our rooms and packed because we were leaving to meeting up with our tour director and touring companions the next day.That night I had gentle healing dreams about my brother.  He died over a year ago and we had a difficult relationship. In these dreams he was being kind and considerate in ways that surprised me.On the train the next day Marietta read to me from Rick Sieve’s travel guide about Ronda, our eventual destination. Ronda was the home to Spain’s oldest bull ring. Images of picadors, toreadors, and bulls were everywhere in Madrid (and later Ronda). As Marietta read about the bullfights, thoughts of narcissism and arrogance again emerged.Spain’s history is replete with the lessons of hubris, arrogance, overreaching, overspending, bravado, pomposity and cruelty. The Spanish Inquisition lasted 400 years. In the Spanish Civil War civilians who were suspected, (yes only suspected) of sympathizing with the wrong side were lined up and shot or thrown off cliffs and bridges. When the opposing side took the town, the same thing was repeated only this time the victims were those suspected of sympathizing with the former victims, now defeated.  And I don’t want to begin to recount what the Spanish did to Jews and Muslins during the Inquisition or what they did to the Mexicans and South Americans.As we rode the train to Ronda and Marietta read to me about Spain and  Ronda, it became  clear that my spiritual journey had something to do with my need to be special, entitled, better than, unique, one of a kind, important, privileged and I could go on. I was sick of myself and sick of Spain. Yet, I felt drawn to follow the path Karen, our tour director, had placed in front of me and determined to avoid acting out my version of Spain’s bravado. I had not yet read any of Lerner’s book and I was to get to it and see how he experienced this part of the world. Day 1 in Ronda Chapter Two: We Are All Going to DieOn the first night Karen, our tour director, arranged for our group of ten to have dinner at an elegant restaurant with a beautiful view of the valley below.It felt like we were in an Agatha Christie novel, ten hapless strangers, each of us traveling for a different purpose. There was Dorothy, a fifty year old, single, dietitian. She was a short, gentle spirit, ready for adventure like a character out of The Hobbit. Clearly this was a life highlight for her, meeting new people, traveling with others she knew from prior trips and trusting in Karen to ensure a safe and stimulating trip.Oh I should begin with Karen, our tour director. She owned and sold a bookstore just before the market for books began to bottom. She used her freedom from tending her store to create the business of guiding walking tours through various parts of the world, mostly Europe with an occasional trip to South America.  She began her adult life working with troubled youth.  She was educated to be a social worker. She has the air of a humble kind shepard. She is a single never married woman who is much more anxious than her calm demeanor would suggest. She is a petite attractive woman who uses the authority of her position as the person in charge to take care of even the least of her flock.Then there was thirty-eight year old Mary, her sixty-six year old mother, Liz, and her sixty-eight year old aunt, Grace. They seem to delight in one another’s company. Mary just completed her master’s degree in journalism. In her youth she was a champion skier and she looks the part, attractive, fit, strong and red-headed. She had an insatiable curiosity. She shadowed our tour guide, peppered him with questions and supplemented his history of Spain with the knowledge she gained from her background reading in preparation for this trip.Mary had a serious relationship with a man in her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her significant other has two girls and she was struggling to find her role in that family. She seemed to have a talent for tending children and animals. I felt confident she would find her way.Her mother, Liz, was a very straightforward woman. She delighted in the company of her daughter and doted on her as much as Mary would allow. She was especially sensitive to her daughter’s cues for space. Liz was long-divorced and raised Mary, a son and another daughter in Winter Park, Colorado. She continues to live there as a well-established single woman. It was obvious to me that she had other chances to marry and that she chose to remain single. Her stories focused on her children, their achievements and adventures.Grace was a puzzle. She appeared to be the blonde Southern woman who eschewed taking on authority and gave away her power. Though she was humble, she walked with strength and a sense of purpose. She may have been among the oldest of us, but she was almost always near the front of the group. Beneath her blonde, unassuming exterior, she was curious and smart. She lived in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her husband was an investment banker. She was the mother of four now grown boys. Being an Aunt to Mary seemed to be an important and cherished role in her life. I could see how well she must have mothered four rambunctious boys, with a combination of cunning, flexibility, kindness, strength and perseverance.Ted was a seventy-plus year old retired stock broker. He had been retired for twenty years. He and his wife were veterans of Karen’s trips. He lost his wife in a car accident precisely a year ago. This trip came at a time when he needed a distraction. Ted lived in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. When there, he awoke every morning at 4:30, met his buddies at 6:00 A.M., walked three and a half miles and had breakfast at McDonald’s at 7:30 A.M. At 8:00 A.M. he was at home taking his dog for another thirty minute walk.Ted had the air of a compliant good ol’ boy with a gentle Southern accent. He was self-deprecating and understated. One could tell that he was used to being a husband in harness to his deceased wife’s needs and demands. He seemed a bit lost without her to set the agenda. Ted was probably our oldest member. Though he was sometimes awkward in his movements and sometimes stressed by the hiking, he had the stamina of a horse and was never at the end of the line.Will and Jane, were husband and wife, like me and Marietta. They were good companions for one another and for the group. Will had been retired for about five years. He was an executive for a company that dole food to restaurants all over the United States and Canada. In his retirement he played golf, traveled to be with his children and grandchildren and now that Jane was retired, he traveled with his wife.Will was of sturdy German stock. He was an eager traveler, curious, interested and willing. He had a can-do attitude. He and Jane came to Madrid a few days before our tour began in Ronda and they planned to stay in Spain to visit the Spanish Mediterranean coast for a couple of days before returning back to Nashville.Jane was a tall, upright, statuesque, attractive blond. She was an accountant by profession and worked as an executive for a healthcare company until she retired a year ago. Both Jane and Will had a good sense for how to play well with others. They had to have that skill to survive and prosper in their respective corporate worlds.Now, as they had obviously reaped the benefits of their success in corporate politics, they were proactively building a life in retirement that focused on healthy, active living, travel and family.It was difficult to guess the ages of Will and Jane. They appeared to be in their mid-fifties, but I suspected they were older.Jennifer was from Cincinnati, Ohio. She was married. Her husband recently had back surgery. He has had back problems for thirty years. Trips like this one were difficult for him. He was glad for Jennifer to take these trips without him, because he did not want his ailment to limit her life. She is a 70-plus year old grandmother. Her adopted daughter is a single mother with two girls. Jennifer helped with her grandchildren when she could. She is an avid walker and she enjoys Karen’s walking tours.David was our tour guide. He was a British expatriate. He moved to this area twenty years ago. He came as a teacher and quickly saw the potential of developing notes and guidebooks for walking tours in this region. He explored the countryside for suitable routes that exposed the beauty of the topography and vegetation in the area. He formulated the maps and routes for our tour and for others who used his notes to take self-guided tours as well.He knew the names of all the plants. He helped us look for izbecks on the crests of the mountains and we found some. He was full of information about Spanish history and the history of Andalusia (the state) and Ronda (the town).David was in his early sixties and he was living with and has been living with a woman from Wales, Linda, who had been a pediatric oncologist in England before she met David and moved to Spain. She had become his partner in the tour business. She was his photographer and she helped him publish his books and tour notes.David was a talented leader. He was so confident in what he knew that he was constantly empowering the group with choices. He worked very hard. For example, the day before one of our walks it had rained heavily. David awoke at 5:00 A.M. to check the footing on the trail we were to use. He discovered it to be very wet from the previous day’s rain. So he adjusted our route to one with a drier and more stable path with fewer streams to cross.Karen might have taken David’s published notes and led the group herself. However, she seemed to prefer letting someone else play the expert role and she seemed to enjoy the role of liaison/geisha connecting us with one another and with guides who were native to the area.And there was David and Marietta. David (me), you might recall was the reluctant curmudgeon traveler who was trying to morph into a curious eager cooperative traveler. Marietta was the learn-and-speak-the-language traveler who worried that David won’t like something and tried to please him on the one hand and on the other complained that his limitations confined her so that she wasn’t be able to explore all the places, events and restaurants which she wanted to explore.They each wore characteristic hats. As you may remember, David’s hat made him look like Indiana Jones. Marietta’s hat seemed to transform her into Ms. Marple. Both hats were rainproof and could be wadded up and thrown in a pack. Hats were essential gear on this hike. They were needed in the rain and for shade from the sun when it wasn’t raining. Now that we have the cast of our Agatha Christie’s mystery (which instead of staring Monsieur Poirot, would be staring Indiana Jones and Ms. Marple), we can return to my quest and my question about its purpose the purpose of this quest.After our first evening’s dinner we all gathered the next morning in the hotel lobby loaded with backpacks and hiking sticks. Initially our plan was to take an all day hike from Benojan over pastures, hills and fields up into Ronda from the valley below. However, it was raining hard on this our first day so Karen and David decided to switch the itinerary around, making day three, day one and that would mean that we would spend the morning of our first day touring the inside of an ancient cave. We were transported up a mountain road to the famous Polenta Cave that had been inhabited 30,000 years. Its last inhabitants were left 4,000 years ago. This cave contained some of the earliest known cave drawings.There were drawings of bulls, horses and fish. There were symbolic marks that represented calendars and traps. Anthropologists theorize that these drawings were part of a religious visionary project. Perhaps the tribal shaman believed that by drawing something and praying in front of that representation, hunters would successfully capture or kill the prey symbolically drawn on the wall and imagined in prayer.I was mostly bored by this one and a half hour tour, guided by the cave’s owner whose Spanish words were translated by David. What I did get from looking at the drawing, bones and pot chards was the clear message (perhaps from God, who knows?) that I am destined to die and that my individual existence is of little importance to the history of humankind. And that while my life makes little difference to anything, I do however, if I so choose, have the opportunity to participate in and contribute to values that are eternal.I can choose to express and receive kindness, compassion, truth and justice or not. In my life I can enjoy these values as part of me or I can disregard them and focus narrowly on me, mine, money, dominance and fame.I am sorry to say that for much of my life, I have missed the opportunity to love and serve others and have instead focused on my life making a difference. When I saw the cave, I saw how silly that was.We left the cave at about 10:30 A.M. It was raining. For three hours we trekked across country on a slippery, muddy path, mostly downhill, through pastures of wet sheep and cows, some chickens but mostly scrub brush and olive trees. We only attended to where to place our next footstep and staying as dry as possible and little else. Two of us emerged with muddy bums.We, one by one, walked into our lunch restaurant minutes apart from one another. Mary and I were the first to arrive. The woman proprietor/cook and her husband seemed stunned and unwelcoming as we two drenched, muddy English speaking trekkers walked through the front door. She originally met us with both arms waving in front of her “no, cerrado” until enough of us had gathered at the door and she realized we were the group for whom she had opened the restaurant. “Oh El Groupo, Senor David,” she said.She took our wet rain gear and placed them on chairs to dry. She gave out dry shirts and jackets; she took a bucket of water, washed off muddy behinds and then she seated us at our banquet table. Once seated, course after course of food emerged on large plates from the kitchen. The plates were passed about. Wine bottle after win bottle appeared and was emptied.After being fed, washed, dried and relaxed, we were loaded on the bus and taken back to our hotel to take hot showers, naps and catch up on our email. That night we were taken to dinner at a restaurant a block behind our hotel, next to a church and a garden plaza.My poor social skills were beginning to be evidenced in the group. I had little to say as the group sat at three tables of four and discussed the events of the day. Again the food and ambience was wonderful. I was embarrassed to be my quiet socially lamb self.I have always had disdain for small-talk and little respect of trivial conversation. Yet, here among these people with diverse beliefs and political and religious persuasions, conversations about weighty matters would only have spoiled the company. Some of the group were talented at keeping the conversation on safe surface, topics, e.g., the weather, the day misadventures, the names of flowers or birds. Karen was especially good at changing the subject or asking a question to move the conversation away from a subject that could easily create tension.Here we were, all of us moderately wealthy people. Most of us except for Karen, maybe Mary and her mother, perhaps Grace and Me and Marietta were likely Republicans, who disliked Obama and here Marietta and I were blue-dog democrats and ardent Obama supporters. How were we going to get through the rest of the trip (especially me with my insistence on telling the truth) without causing a scene?I envied the talent of those people who could easily navigate these social waters with grace and poise. Grace may have been the best at it. She eschewed authority with every opportunity, making a statement, then following it with a disqualifying “but what do I know” flippant self-effacing remark. She was so not competing to be the alpha dog. She was always easy to be with, always non-assuming. I was hoping to learn from her.The next day we were off to hike eight-plus miles in and around Grazaloma, Spain. It was our tour guide, David’s plan that our destination each day was a tavern or bar. On this day we hiked muddy and/or rocky terrain, though pastures of sheep and a few cows on trails marked by kairns (rocks piled one on top the other). The kairn’s were useless to us because there were piles of rocks everywhere, as well as stone fences and abandoned stone houses. After the 1950’s Spain’s rural inhabitants abandoned their farm homes and moved either to work in the city or to return to their fields from villages by motorbikes to tend to their flocks, gardens, crops and trees.The houses were all painted white because of the plague in the middle ages. The white wash purified the walls and helped prevent the spread of the plague. Ronda and the areas which we were exploring were inside an area designated as a national park. All buildings in this area which were built after the Moors left Spain were required to be painted white and to be roofed with red clay tiles. This is the reason for the picturesque white villages with red-tiled roofs that spot the countryside in the Andalusian Region of Spain.The demographic movement from rural Spain left an abandoned countryside, with deteriorating stone houses. The animals, including deer and Ibex maintained the trials upon which we walked. David told us a story of a woman who used to live in the abandoned home where we stopped to have our packed lunch. These farmhouses were fairly large structures of about 1,000 square feet. They were occupied by people and animals, people in half the house, animals in the other, usually separated by a wall.This family was sharecroppers, as were all the other families living on the land there. They shared one-third of their earnings with the landowners, who owned the land and every structure on the land. The landowners lived in a nearby village. This meant that the home built and maintained by this family and their forbearers did not belong to the family who bought and transported the expensive roof tiles, cut the timbers, hauled, stacked stones and made cement to hold the  stacked stones in place. The sharecropping family plastered, painted the plaster white and maintained the houses.As we began our walk, many sounds accompanied the crunching of our footsteps on the gravel road. Barking dogs, clucking chickens and crowing roosters surrounded us for the first half mile, as we passed a cluster of farmhouses that lined this road.When we moved from road to path, our feet no longer made noise as we walked but we heard baa’s from sheep and clanging bells that were draped around the necks of some cows and some sheep. The cowbells had a deeper sound than the sheep bells. David offered an explanation for the bells. Herders put a bell on the animal that most often tests limits. Somehow the bell calms the animal or reminds the animal to behave and stay with the others.I wondered if the bells did not make it easier for the herder to find an animal that wanders from the herd.Back to the landlord, and sharecropper family that lived in the home where we sat and ate our jamon and queso sandwich, with an orange and cookie. Every summer the landlord would take his family for a holiday up the mountain on his land for two weeks. The tenant family had to prepare their home for the landlord’s family, move out of the house and devise ways to tend their flocks, maintain their charcoal making facilities, weed and water their vegetable garden while based in rooms they either rented or were shared with them by friends in the village. To do their daily farm chores they had to walk miles from the village to their farm each day for that two weeks.I suppose I should think nothing of this, but I do because I own land from which other men log timber and other men spray defoliates and plant young trees that I rarely see and I profit from their labor. And for no other reason that I inherited this land.Somehow I am able to accept my way of life, but I was still and still am highly incensed that this emperor landlord displaced this hard-working peasant family from their home for no other reason than he wanted to escape the summer heat in the village some 750 meters lower in altitude and four miles away.Of course, this was and is a vestige of the feudal system in which the nobles owned land worked by peasants.  Peasants were allowed to live and work on the land at the nobleman’s discretion. In turn the noble family was allowed the privilege of overseeing the land which was owned by the king and collected rent from the peasants. If the noble families did not pay their taxes to the king or was otherwise not loyal to the throne, they were thrown off their land (just as the peasants might removed from the land if the noblemen so chose) and someone else was given this land to oversee and collect the landowner’s portion from the peasants.Not so unlike today where people own money making enterprises, land, businesses, factories and the government is their resented silent partner to which they must pay some portion.David told us about the European zoning rules that assumed the land in some form belonged to all the people (or at least access to the land) and people could walk through anyone’s land so long as they did not leave the path. The path belonged to everyone. The land on either side belonged to the landowner. This was the reason we were allowed to walk through these pastures.Also, as I mentioned earlier, some parts of the country were designated natural areas. People could live in already built homes but no new structures could be built and all structures must be painted white and conform to certain building codes. Here in Spain the people did not believe that landowners were free to do whatever they wanted on their land. Landowners had obligations to future generations. The government, in return, reforested the land for free.I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the Native Americans had developed technology, science, written language and universities before the Europeans and they had traveled east in boats and discovered England and Europe in say 1000 A.D. and conquered Europe. What if the Native American’s had brought with them to Europe the assumption that land could never be owned, that the earth belonged to us all and it was everyone’s responsibility to protect and nurture the land. I wonder what sort of society would have developed from that assumption.A pattern that existed on the first day reappeared and was confirmed on the second day. On the first day, I was in front of the line of hikers. David tended toward the front middle and Karen was often at the end. On the first day, I was the first to arrive at our destination, even though it was comparatively a short walk, two and half miles.When I imagined this trip, I had resolved that I would not walk in front. I have always been a front walker shouting and encouraging those behind me to follow. It was as if I were Kit Carson, scouting the path for the cavalry. I did have a mind that seemed to always be solving the problem of which way to turn next or where was the best spot to place my foot. If people chose to take the path that I scouted out and devised, they would have a safe journey or this is what I always believed.I was always irritated when those behind me chose another way after all the hard work and figuring I had done for them. And it seemed to me that people were ungrateful and often resented me for knowing the way. It took me years to understand how self-defeating this life pattern was for me.I did notice my brother Bill’s leadership style. It was very different from mine (though I always thought I was trying to be like Bill). Bill was the best friend to all of his peers. He was the person whom they chose to lead in almost every situation. He was a natural leader.Instead of being in front, Bill was mostly at the rear. Instead of telling people which way to go, he asked people which way they wanted to go. While I was always impatient to get there, Bill was more interested in how comfortable the pace was for people.David and Karen were leaders like Bill. They intuitively knew that the more choices they created for the group, the more the group would gladly follow their lead. They were never insecure about their authority. Rather they were so secure in their role as leader, that it rarely mattered to them if they were in front.I wanted to be like Bill, David and Karen on this trip but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t. My feet needed to move at their pace. I was impatient when I had to wait until the person in front of me took their next step. The group felt my impatience and often made way to let me pass. And pass I did.Oh I have a bit of an excuse. Slow walking hurts my back. My back does much better when I’m constantly moving or if I am sitting. Standing or walking slowly and looking - the usual museum pace, kills my back.But who am I kidding. I like to be out front setting the pace. Though I’m not nearly as competitive as I once was, I often felt my inner race horse wanting to be the nose that breathed the out front air. The desire is just in me. It has been there as long as I can remember.As I have become older, I have tried to temper this urge, but with only a modicum of success.When we approached Grazeloma, I was once again in front by a ways. Marietta suddenly came up from behind me jogging. I knew why. She needed to go to the bathroom and she often felt the pull of the barn, or the near the end desire to run so that the pain in her legs would end.Here she came and I joined her gallop, worried that the body weight coming down on the base of my spine from these faster more forceful steps would pinch a nerve in my back. I risked it just for the joy of moving in tandem with Marietta pushing to the end together.We got to a fork in the road and we made a choice without stopping, knowing that we risked making the wrong choice. We hit the town plaza and a john in a bar on the plaza. As we came out luckily, the others behind us emerged. I’m sure that they were a bit irritated and worried that we were lost. This was a normal position for me. I used to think it was their problem for not keeping up as they should. Now I know better. It is my responsibility to stay connected to my community, always, not the community’s responsibility to keep up with me.Soon all was forgotten and forgiven. We were sitting in the shade in front of a bar drinking Clera’s (beer and lemonade), sangria (wine coolers), wine or beer or a coke. For me, it was always a coke. Alcohol would make me even more tired than I was and I was exhausted.This hike was more strenuous than a normal eight and a half mile hike. Our feet were stuck in mud or jumping from dry spot to dry spot or falling off an unstable rock. Instead of moving about one yard per step, we moved half that. Instead of walking on a flat surface, we were going up and down hills. Sometimes the inclines were steep. Ted is in the habit of walking four miles every day. Even he was exhausted by these hikes.After we sat at the tavern, had our drink and felt a bit refreshed, the bus came and collected twelve dragging bodies and deposited us in front of our hotel. We schlepped our backpacks to our rooms and what the others did, I don’t know, but I fell on the bed, slept without moving an inch for an hour. Then I took a shower and dressed for dinner.We gathered in the hotel lobby, looking refreshed. We strolled together down a hill to a restaurant at the bottom. The food was once again delicious. The time of sunset in Spain seemed strange to me. At 7:30 the sun was still well above the horizon. At 9:30 the sun had set but it was twilight. In Nashville this light seemed to occur an hour earlier. And Madrid, about 200 miles north of Ronda, is the same latitude as New York City.As we walked down the hill, the valley below was spread out on either side. Ronda is built on a ridge. The ridge is surrounded by farmland in the valley below. It is as if someone built a large town of 50,000 people on top of the Narrows of the Harpeth near Nashville. In Ronda a stream runs directly under the city some 500 feet down.The colors in the valley below are basic primary colors, red poppies, yellow wild flowers, green wheat fields and pastures, blue flowers, brown dirt dotted with dark green olive trees in rows, white horses moving about with cows, goats and sheep at pasture.After supper the return walk up the hill to our hotel was difficult on a stomach full with food and wine, but the pink in the sky and the muted colors in that valley and the dogs we met along the way made it easier.The next day was our most beautiful and spectacular walk. We rode the train to Benoajan. The ground was well saturated so David gave us the choice of taking a longer drier route or a wetter shorter route. The longer route would add forty-five minutes to our walk.We chose the drier longer route. We began walking on a gravel road, through groves of olive trees and cork trees. David told us some interesting things about these trees. Fresh olives, he said, were so bitter that they are inedible. Olives are soaked in water for days until the bitter taste dissolves in the water and they have no taste. Then they are soaked again in water with a recipe of a variety of herb and spices. The olives absorb the tastes from the recipe. Always salt is a prominent ingredient, but other spices can be added to create different tastes. Salt is added until an egg floats in the water. We ate some local olives that obviously had garlic added to the brine. They were unique and delicious.After olives are pressed for olive oil, the oil sits for several weeks because the oil contains so much sediment. David prefers to have olive oil fresh from the pressing. Every day the flavor and clarity of the oil changes. He and his mate, Linda enjoy the taste adventure that comes from having a different tasting oil each day.Cork trees are grown here, Portugal, Southern France and Northern Africa. The cork tree is in the oak family. It propagates with acorns. It requires a temperate climate and acid rich sandy soil. People who make their income from cork are threatened by the screw-top wine bottles and plastic faux-corks in the much of today’s wines. We reassured David that wine buyers in the U.S. knew little about good wine and they often judged the quality of the wine by whether or not its bottle had a real cork. I am one of those fools and there are many others like me.The cork trees are harvested once every seven years. Very old large trees have the cork bark sheared from their trunks and their large limbs. Most of the trees were two feet or less in diameter. The cork from these trees were harvested mainly from their trunks and usually only the bottom six feet or so. This care not to take too much from the tree protects the trees sap flow. The harvested part of the tree that gave up its bark to the cork farmer is a rust/red, while the rest of the bark on the tree is a gray/black. Over time the rust red turns darker as each year adds a new layer of cork.David also told us a story about a white-bulbed flower called the Asphodel. It was everywhere in full bloom among the trees ,in the pastures, along the paths and by the fences, wire and stone. In a battle against the Moors in the 1600’s, the Moors had the Spanish surrounded in the village. Villagers pulled the Asphodels from the ground being sure to take the bulb. They then built a fire and roasted the bulbs to just the right temperature. When the Moors attacked the next day, the villagers pulled the flowers out of the fire by the stems and smashed them on the rock pavement. This caused the bulbs to explode sounding like a gunshot. The intimidated Moors retreated, leaving this village alone.Every year in early May the village commemorates this event, repeating the roasting of the Asphodels and the explosions of their bulbs. You might think that over the years that this would create a shortage of Asphodels. But we saw no sign of this.This was our fourth day in Ronda. I had not had my fix of being sought after as a therapist for about a week now. I couldn’t stand not being Dr. McMillan, the one who knows, for another minute. Mary seemed like the best victim for my Dracula therapy teeth. Remember Mary, she was the youngest among us, daughter of a long divorced mother, thirty-five, recent journalism graduate, the stepparent figure to two daughters of her significant other. She seemed likely to have issues. There was the one about graduating with a master’s in journalism when there are few jobs for journalists. As I explored that avenue it seemed clear that she was probably top in her class and a likely candidate for a job in public radio.The first nibble she took from my posing as Dr. McMillan had to do with her personality style. It seemed that she got along very well with animals, children and people older than her and not so well with her peers.That sounded familiar to me, since I too had this same experience and had given much thought to this subject. I had two theories about this, one environmental and one genetic. I told her a version of the environmental theory.Here we were Mary and me, strolling in the lead. Mary like me was a good path finder and she liked figuring out and knowing the way. I was glad to give up the lead to her because of her obvious competence and because I felt righteous when I was not taking the lead role.We walked ahead through green pastures among gray white boulders and rocks, through fields filled with wild flowers talking, paying little attention to our surroundings. I was in heaven. I had an audience for my theories (I’m not sure how interested an audience she was) but I was so starved for my Dr. McMillan role that I’m not sure I cared.So I told her that often people like us (her and me) had enmeshed relationships with our mothers. We defeated our fathers for our mother’s love. This made us feel like we were co-adults with our mothers. We were often seen as precocious authoritative children who adults enjoyed. This made us believe that peer friendships were unnecessary and that anyway we were superior to them; not a good attitude for making friends or playing well with others. And what’s more we were well occupied and entertained in the world of adults. Consequently, we never learned the skills it took to go along and get along with our peers.I must have passed the test for being a more or less competent psychologist because then she shared her real problem. It seemed the twelve-year-old daughter of her mate drew a picture in which she (the twelve-year-old) was on the green grass, her father was the sun and Mary was a cloud between her (the daughter) and the sun. The twelve-year-old daughter didn’t understand why her daddy needed Mary. She wanted to know why she, the daughter, wasn’t enough.Add to this the mother of the daughter was constantly fighting with the father, Mary’s mate. Of course, Mary saw these conflicts from his point of view.All right, throw me a pitch right over the plate. I’ve got this one, though I worried that my response might seem a bit odd.The daughter was approaching puberty, any day now, and Mary did not think she (the twelve-year-old daughter) understood conception. First, I suggested that she be careful with the issue of puberty. If the daughter had her first period while she was with her (Mary) that she should immediately call the father, have him take the daughter to her mother and let her mother explain what was happening to her daughter and allow the mother to help the daughter cope with this frightening moment. This is a very important time in the life of a girl and her mother. Mary should be very careful not to usurp the mother’s role. This might help the mother see Mary as an ally rather than a threat.Once the daughter understood the engine behind conception, (i.e., that adults have sex and enjoy having sex) this often answers the daughter’s question of her father (i.e. why do you need Mary) and at the same time helps the daughter direct her emotional attachment away from her father and toward children her own age.The awareness of sex is the beginning of a child’s journey in to the development of a separate self. It is where adolescents begin to have thoughts that they cannot tell their parents. It is an important and difficult time. The daughter’s question (why do you need Mary) is a very important one and at the right time in her development, the answer will be obvious to her.I told Mary that I believed the role of the stepparent in a blended family was the most difficult family role. The person playing this role often had the responsibility of being a parent without the authority of a parent. The stepparent was easy to marginalize and demonize. The success of the stepparent often depended on the support of the same sex biological parent. Often the same sex parent was the person most threatened by the stepparent.Mary seemed to appreciate my thoughts and I appreciated having someone with whom I could share them. I was important again. My narcissism beast had been fed.As we came upon Ronda, the view of the white city on the hill was as magnificent as the view of the countryside was from Ronda.You may recall that the ridge that Ronda occupied was intersected by a stream and a waterfall. The two separate parts were joined by a bridge. The part of Ronda that was on our right was called the old town. The new town, on the other side, was built in the 1700’s.It is believed that in For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway was writing about Ronda and this bridge as he described how people were thrown off a bridge in the center of town as punishment for being on the wrong side in the Spanish Civil War. I could not help but imagine this horrible event as we approached this beautiful sight.This walk exhausted us more than any other. It was a very hot day. We were swilling water every 100 steps. There was no shade and no clouds. Sun screen protected our skin from the sun but not from its glare and heat. At the trails end, I was ahead as usual. I got to a dead-end T in the path and waited in the shade some time before I saw the others. David pointed to the right and I was off again. It was all uphill and our destination was the place where we had dinner two days ago. I grabbed a chair at a table outside a bar, ordered a coke and waited while, one at a time, the others joined me. All were exhausted and thirsty.We rested in the shade of the tavern and its red umbrellas, drinking either beer, clera, sangria wine or coke. I couldn’t imagine how I would walk the last quarter mile up the hill with the effect of alcohol added to my tired sore legs. We must have stayed at the tavern for at least an hour. Ted generously picked up the tab and we walked up the ridge to our hotel.I took a shower and rested on the bed, while Marietta found the interest and energy to watch the movie version of For Whom the Bell Tolls downstairs in the hotel lobby.As we did every evening, we gathered at the front door of the hotel at 7:00. Each of us would give our key to the Concierge as we left. Then we walked to Karen’s selection for the restaurant of the evening. Sometimes Karen took our dinner choices and called them ahead to the restaurant so that they would be ready for us when we arrived.In Spain, 7:00 – 7:30 PM was considered early dining.  Most restaurant patrons did not arrive for dinner until 9:30 or so. Lunch was similarly later than is the U.S. custom. Usually lunch in Spain is at 2:00 P.M. We kept the U.S. customary eating times. This helped assure us of easy reservations and good service, a problem for a group of ten-twelve. And it helped us be up and ready for the next day’s hike at 9:00 A.M.The dinners began to run together for me. I think we ate at another restaurant at the bottom of the ridge. What I remember most about the meal was that Ted was tired and left early. Once he left, the power of his suggestion reminded me of how tired I was and suddenly I could barely keep my eyes open. So I excused myself from the company and began my walk up the ridge in the twilight. Just before the path began to move into an incline I saw two men with Spanish spaniels mounted on two large well-formed horses, one white and one roan.  Suddenly I was awake and focused. These horses were beautiful creatures and clearly their riders were master horsemen. The two mounted horses were prancing in place waiting for permission to move forward, while the three black spaniels ran in circles around the horses.I wanted to stay and see what the horses and riders were about to do, but I felt as if I was intruding and my legs were not willing to stand and watch for an indeterminate amount of time. So I proceeded back to the hotel and to bed. I wasn’t sure when Marietta came in. She later told me that she walked up the ridge with the rest of the group and watched the last part of For Whom the Bell Tolls in the hotel lobby.The next day was a free day. Karen had planned a city tour for the group that would last until noon. Any who cared to walk a trail along the bottom of the ridge were welcome to join her in the afternoon.Marietta had other plans for us. We took a bus from Ronda to Malaga. Though on the map the bus station appeared to be near the train station in Ronda, that did not mean that Marietta and I could not get lost trying to find it.We did, however, come upon the bus station by watching a bus take a turn and following it into the station. It was about 10:00 A.M. Our bus to Malaga was to leave at 10:10. As we were buying our bus tickets and boarding, four buses packed with tourists arrived and unloaded. Ronda was a tourist town. Its streets seemed fairly empty in the morning until 10:30. Then the streets were packed with people with cameras. At about 5:00 the people with cameras disappeared and buses packed with tourists pulled out of the bus station.The bus trip to Malaga was slow but only because the bus stopped so often. We got to Malaga before noon. The bus station had maps of the city. Marietta wanted to go to the Picasso Museum in Malaga. This was his home. He left Malaga at eighteen. Some of his very early work was displayed in the Picasso Museum here.We set off on a walk from the bus station across the city to the Museum. Malaga was a thriving busy pedestrian friendly city with large buildings and statues like Madrid.Our greatest discovery was the map app on my iPhone and we saw a blue dot on a street map of Malaga. It represented the location of our cell phone. We watched as it moved along Paseo de los Tilos to Bueanvista Palace the home of the Picasso Museum. Watching ourselves move along on a map toward our destination intoxicated me.When we reached the museum, we found a tavern on a side street nearby and had lunch. Marietta left me there and I wrote the beginnings of this travel log.I was worried about my writing because on my other trips I wrote each day. Since I had written nothing til this moment, I was afraid I would have forgotten some important details. And probably I did.I could not believe that I was allowed by the waiter to sit at this outdoor shaded table for two hours writing without me ordering anymore than another coke.  He cleared up the plates around me, stood nearby in case I needed something while he watched a soccer game on T.V.Marietta emerged from the museum and found me about 3:30. She had some post card size copies of Picasso paintings which were displayed in the museum. They were beautiful realistic paintings that must have taken him hours to execute. They were not sketches on napkins that a child might draw and his signature.For a moment I was almost sorry that I did not take the museum tour along with Marietta, but I was pleased that I had written eight pages. Clearly my conception of Picasso’s talent was misguided. I didn’t think that he was capable of drawing something that actually looked like a photograph. I was wrong. Marietta explained to me that Picasso learned that a few lines could elicit the notion of a face in the viewers mind. And since he wanted to stimulate the thinking in his audience and make a statement with his work, he decided to use color and form as symbols rather than to represent reality. This he believed would make for a better conversation between the artist and his audience because the audience would be more involved in visualizing what was intended that was missing from the art. (And by the way he could produce a lot more art with fewer strokes and make more money.)While this explanation did redeem Picasso as an artist in my mind, I continued to think of him as a modern man just as was Hemingway and John F. Kennedy and John Wayne in the way he treated women. I still remember that in most Western movies of the modern era (1950’s) there was a scene in which circumstances were dire and the actress was hysterically crying and screaming, “What are we going to do?” and the male lead, often John Wayne as I remember, would slap her and she would become calm and look at him gratefully for putting her in her place. Regardless of his artistic talent or philosophy, Picasso was still one of these modern men, who had defeated religion with science, who spoke declaratively without question marks in their sentences, who saw statements as true or false, who knew the answer to everything or knew how to find the answer and who stood for good against evil and right over wrong. These were men who knew what was best and expected to be followed, especially by women.And the women who to me represent the modern woman were Jacqueline Kennedy, Doris Day, June Allison and Marilyn Monroe. They were attracted to the Cary Grants, John F. Kennedy, Hemingway, Picasso and John Wayne version of modern men.And I was attracted to those same women. I was raised to be the quarterback of the football team, the son of a town father who recruited industry to Arkadelphia and successfully promoted Congress to build a dam on the Caddo River. I was Bill McMillan’s son who would someday grow up to lead the community just as he had. I might run for congress. I certainly would take my turn as president of the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. I would be the elder in the Presbyterian Church and the advisor to the presidents of the two local colleges. I would know the answers like my father and I would speak the truth and stand for honesty just as he and John Wayne and other men who slapped their women to calm them down did (though as far as I know, my father never laid a hand on my mother, but my mother was never hysterical. I’m pretty sure if she had been in such a hysterical state that my father would have done just what John Wayne did in the movies.) And of these modern men, Picasso biographies represent him as one of the most misogynist of all these men.In college, at what is now Rhodes College, I was introduced to feminism and I began to see that I did not want to be the man I was raised to be. Yet, I stood erect and square shouldered like my father. I loved sports and spoke the truth like he did. I was sure of myself as he was. I spoke in declarative sentences as he did and I believed in science and the truth. I too was trying to hang on to God but my image of God was a deist image of a God who was fast losing his power. In fact my God was changing sexes.I was relieved when I was told that I didn’t have to take care of, protect or open doors for women. I was intrigued that women who were no longer shackled by the patriarchy would be sexually liberated and would have as much sexual interest as I did. I was interested in sharing authority with women so long as someone was in charge. I did not have to be in charge but if no one was, then I would take charge. I had no idea about how to allow a group consensus to emerge or how important it was not to come to an answer too early. If someone else had an answer or a better answer than I did, that was fine with me, but if there was a question without an answer, I would provide the answer or go to get one and be back in minutes with a clear path. I was very threatened by ambiguity. Yet, I wanted to change my stripes from John Wayne to Alan Alda.I could not. And as I sit here writing this today I cannot. We followed our blue dot on the iPhone map back to the bus station in Malaga which was next to the train station. There we boarded a train at 6:00 P.M., instead of a bus, in hopes that we would get to Ronda sooner by train. T’was not to be. The train stopped at every station just as the bus had.We returned to Ronda at 8:00 P.M., found a restaurant on the street on the way home, ate supper and went to bed, ready for the next day which was to be the last hike of the arranged tour.Our last group adventure was to be a trek to look at a particular kind of vulture. In a nearby canyon there was a roost of over 200 vulture families. The plan was for us to walk down a trail for two miles where we would turn off the trail and walk only a few yards to a viewing area where we could watch the spectacular scene of vultures circling and landing on perches and nests that were less than forty yards across from us on the steep canyon walls.We loaded on the bus. Karen reminded us that none of us was obligated to go the full distance. Anyone could find a shady spot along the path and we would have very good view of the vultures from there as well.It was a very hot day. There were no clouds and no wind. Shortly after we began our hike we saw vultures circling and landing. Some of our group were nursing sore feet, ankles, knees or backs and chose to take Karen’s advice.The rest of us walked to David’s secret viewing point. All of us were rewarded with views of these very large birds circling above with eight foot wing spans. Once they landed they seemed to disappear in the rock. We had binoculars and cameras with high-powered lenses and we were eventually able to distinguish the birds from the rocks.All of us found a spot where we could sit and observe the circling giants above us. I was very tired from the week’s long walks and in moments I was sleeping.Just prior to the arrival of the sandman, I was wondering what meaning could be made for me that the last day of our walking tour was focused on vultures. Now granted these were unusual vultures, giant birds even among large raptors. Their circling flight high above was entrancing. Their flight as they swooped in to land on the rocks nearby was amazing. But their roosting posture and their walking about was awkward and clumsy, with their closed wings forming what looked like large shoulders extending over their head that seemed tilted forward.These particular birds mated for life. If one died they never joined with another mate to build a nest or hatch a baby. If we were able to keep our lenses or binoculars still we were able to see a baby’s head bobbing about a nest.Just before sleep took over my brain, I was thinking that these birds often symbolized death. They existed by eating flesh from dead animals. They were scavengers and opportunists who helped rid the earth of sick decaying flesh. Their existence forced us to face the temporary nature of our own existence, just as the cave had on the first day of our tour.As I feel asleep, I was thinking that my particular version of the narcissistic modern man was just one of many psyches like mine trying to find my way in a postmodern universe. In a relatively short time our bodies would be appropriate food for these birds. And what difference did our attempt at importance make?My wife somehow tolerated my arrogance and found a way to love me. I have some friends who have been able to accept me and find more good in me than bad. Yes, I am proud of my theory of sense of community and articles and books that I have published. Yes, I think I am, now, after thirty years a master at the craft of psychotherapy and working with couples, families, attorneys and the courts.And yes, today I was walking at the head of the line to get to this spot and I and our group expected that on the return trip back to the bus, I would be leading again. Though I want to change, to become more humble, to be a person who is easier to love, I’m not sure I can completely erase my sense of pride. Maybe I have to wait for death and the vultures to do that for me. But I plan to keep on with this project til then.The next day Marietta and I boarded the morning train to Madrid. Karen and some others of our group were on the same train in a different car. I was exhausted and irritable. I could not keep my eyes open. Every word from Marietta’s mouth that required my attention irritated me and I snapped at her over nothing and was ashamed of myself.Karen walked by our seats and stopped to speak. I was so exhausted that I could not keep my eyes open. I tried to converse politely but I couldn’t. As soon as Karen left I was asleep.I slept for an hour or so. When I awoke I decided to read the book I brought to help me understand what a new version, a post modern version of an American student expatriate in Spain would look like and contrast that with Hemingway’s clear image of modern American man in Spain as portrayed by his life and his main character in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan.    

Annecy, France

             I sit and write six floors above the ground looking down at cars and people traversing the Rue de Revoli in Paris. Sounds like the life huh? But wait. Marietta and I are on the first day of another quest. The intention of this quest was a pilgrimage to Annecy France, home of the great thinker, philosopher and idea man behind the American and French Revolutions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In my psychology world this man was the first, before Freud, to speculate that past events and childhood memories have great impact on human development. He was the first thinker to pose the culture as the problem 300 years before narrative therapy; the first to develop the notion of narcissism and the first to propose a core self or personality existed in each of us. He was the father of modern autobiography and he was the first person to write an honest, self-critical, self aware account of one’s life with what today would be called an authentic observing ego or a mindful self. He was the first thinker/writer to suggest the importance of “being” over “doing.”Rousseau fascinates me. To me he represents an excellent example of long standing debate in psychology, the nature/nurture debate. Though he was the first to say that nurture was important to future development, his behavior and temperament follow a path clearly laid down before him in what I believe to be the genes of his ancestors.My purpose on this trip was to explore the implications of this debate in how therapists interpret and explain our patient’s behavior through an examination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s life. My primary source is Leo Dameosch’s biography of Rousseau, Rousseau, a Restless Genius.That was the purpose I imagined when Rita and John invited us to join them on a trip for three weeks this spring to Annecy France, one of the homes of Rousseau. And I promise to explore this topic here.Now to Fate’s purpose. Three weeks before we were to depart, I rode my bicycle up the last hill before I returned home, the steepest hill, in my daily eleven mile ride. On this day I felt particularly strong.  I never once shifted from to my highest gear. I was riding fast and hard. My heart raced and I felt alive. As I pressed the pedal near the top of this bill, I said to myself, “I feel stronger today than I have felt in ten years.” Then snap. A muscle in my left hip spasmed around a nerve. Pain shot through my lower back. Immediately I stopped, pulled myself off the bike and walked carefully the rest of the way home (about .2 of a mile).No problem. This happened to me six months previously. Ice, ibuprofen, some careful stretching and I was back on my bike in seven days then, hard at it in two weeks. Not so this time. For various reasons I had to do a great deal of travel in the next few weeks. This took me away from my bag of frozen lima beans, away from my careful stretches and put me in a plane and car seats for hours at a time. The result of which is that as I sit here today looking down on Rue de Revoli, I am under the influence of oxycotin, and a powerful muscle relaxer. My handwriting is shaky and I am afraid to move in any way re-stimulate the flash of pain in my back.So it appears I am on a second quest as well, the quest to deal with the deterioration of my 67 (in 11 days 68) year old body and my determination to remain engaged with life. And of course, or always on my quests, to defeat the curmudgeon part of myself and to be a pleasant traveling companion to my wife, who deserves better, Marietta.The first part of this quest: to manage life and physical pain began with my trip to Connecticut to see my friend, Steven Prasinos and his wife, Nancy. I go there every other year and he comes to see me for a week end every other year. My back went out on me on Monday and I was on the plane to Connecticut on Friday with my body unsuccessfully shifting in my seat hoping to find a pain free way to sit.I rarely drink alcohol, but when Steven and I are together I often indulge. It should be noted that I am a cheap drunk. I don’t hold my liquor well and I was taking four Ibuprofen every four hours. It should also be noted that one Ibuprofen can put me to sleep.As I disembarked from the plane carrying my bag, on a 1-10 scale my back pain was an 8.When I greeted Steven I shouted, “Scotch, I need Scotch. My back is killing me.”Steven laughed, took my bag from me and we got in his car for a ride to Steven’s home in Waterbury.On our ride from Hartford to Waterbury, we picked up our forever personal, professional, collaborative conversation as if we had never taken a break. In these conversations Steven often champions darkness and I light. Steven quotes me the lyrics of one of his latest songs and I tell him about my latest writing project (this time it is about Rousseau). We talk all the way to Waterbury and our conversation is so engrossing I almost forget about my back.Steven said, “I have a bottle of McClaren waiting for you at home. Me, I’m driving I won’t be drinking with you tonight. Nancy has made reservations for us to attend a kind of meditation concert. It’s hard to describe. Nancy and I call it “the gong show,” but what that label connotes is not a fair description. I will get you home for your scotch as soon as I can.”Once there I drank two stiff drinks of scotch and we soon left for the concert. I took more scotch with me in the car and also swallowed another dose of four ibuprofen pills.By the time we arrived at venue for the “gong show” I was seriously under the influence. I was pleased to be shown to the mat on which I would lay prone on my back for the next ninety minutes. The swirling room only became still once I was on my back. The performers irritated me with their words. I kept wishing for them to shut the F*** up and allow silence or provide only the vibrating sounds of the glass and metal gongs set around the room. Finally, they stopped talking and began to caress the gongs into vibrating moans. I began to float, dream, swim among the sounds. I loved the visions I had, but I knew I would not remember any when it was over. Steven and Nancy lay nearby helping me feel safe as I traveled to parts unknown.For the whole time I lay with my knees up and my back flat against the vibrating floor. I felt no pain. Let me write that again. I felt no pain.I wish I had words for this experience. I was practicing what Rousseau preached. I was completely in the present. No past or future existed. I floated on a benign magic vibrating cloud of now. I was not connected to anyone and I was connected to everyone.When the gongs stopped and the irritating voices returned, the flat on my back on the floor remained the only place where I was confident that the world would be still. I saw people moving above and around me. Steven and Nancy exchanged pleasantries with people they knew. All I could do was smile and nod.There were some elderly people (meaning fragile 80 plus year olds), many couple’s around Steven and Nancy’s age, 40’s – 50’s, some 20’s – 30’s. I felt separate from all of them, yet a peer, not above or below, none of my usual automatic status thoughts, like “he’s in good shape” or “she’s pretty” or “that’s an expensive watch,” none of that. I just felt clear about their right to be themselves, their complicated, difficult, kind, peace-seeking selves and my right to be inebriated.I was aware of being a stranger to them in a different place but I didn’t care. We had all just shared an experience, each in our own way, me in my physically limited, impaired way. The only words I remembers saying were to Steven. Once we were in the car returning to his home I said, “Steven, I am so glad you decided to remain sober. I know I should not be behind the wheel of a car.”I was vaguely aware of my back pain as I got out of the car once we arrived at Steven’s house. Nancy drove home in her car ahead of us and met me there with another scotch drink, neat. She and I imbibed, while Steven fixed a fire in the fire pit outside. When Steven had the fire going, we took our scotch bottle outside with us to sit around the fire with Steven and talk.Steven invited us to share our darkness, revealing parts of our worst selves. This is something Steven and I often do in our time together. This dark sharing was not familiar to Nancy. I helped Nancy discover this eventual communion in our confession of sins.I was aware of the pain in my back but less so perhaps, because in my inebriated state I moved so slowly.I went to sleep that night still drunk and woke the next morning refreshed. We went for an eight mile bicycle ride around a lake not far from their home. It was a beautiful slow ride that tested the limits of my back. I was pleased when I put my bike into the back of Steven’s minivan that my back was tried, a bit strained but the pain was not worse. Nancy went to work from the lake. Steven and I returned home where I took more ibuprofen, iced my back and sat in Steven’s hot tub while Steven separated and planted hostas in his yard.Before we went to dinner at a very nice restaurant Steven offered me more scotch. I drank two large drinks before and then we left. The restaurant was some distance away. We were seated once there. I took my four pills and we ordered drinks before dinner to celebrate and toast our friendship. I ordered another Scotch, Steven tequila.As we ate and talked, I felt the same feeling I felt the night before except more so. My stomach began to roll. I didn’t want another bite of food. Steven complained about not having enough to eat. I began to offer him the remains of my chicken pasta and I felt what must’ve been my blood pressure dropping. I said, “Steven I’m going to faint.”I really don’t know what happened next. When I became aware of my surroundings, Steven stood next to me repeatedly asking me, “Are you okay?” He looked at the patrons and wait staff surrounding us and said, “Can you stop starring? He’s fine.”“Are you sure?” a waiter asked. “I’m a trained paramedic and he doesn’t look fine to me. Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?”The word “fine” seemed to aptly describe my feelings. I had not a care in the world. I didn’t care if they starred. I didn’t care if they called an ambulance. I wasn’t hungry, but I was content, very content.“Are you finished?” Steven asked me.I nodded yes.“Check please. We’re in a hurry,” Steven said.They brought the check; Steven paid and then came over next to me looking down at me ready to help me as I stood. Once erect, I began a slow motion march out of the restaurant. Somehow the doors opened magically in front of us. As Steven and I walked outside, we saw an ambulance parked to the left of the restaurant in the middle of the street. Two firemen in rescue gear off-loaded a gurney. It never occurred to me that this might have something to do with me. We turned the corner out of sight from the ambulance and walked toward the car. Just before we reached the car, the two firemen came rushing toward us.“Are you okay?” They shouted at us from about thirty feet away.“Yes,” Steven said, “we’re fine.”They looked directly at me for an answer and I nodded.When we were in our car seats, belts fastened and driving away, Steven said, “I’m glad we didn’t go to the ER. I would have had to explain what happened and I was worried somehow this would get on your record in Tennessee and you would get in trouble somehow.”I was glad that we avoided the ER but only because of the hassle, not so much because I would get in some sort of trouble.Again, what I was most aware of was that I could not have been trusted to be behind the wheel of a car. I was significantly impaired. I could barely put a string of words together to make a sentence or keep track of Steven’s words as he spoke to me. Thank God Steven was sober.I don’t remember much from the rest of the evening. My next memory is of me waking the next morning still groggy, off balance and my back hurting.  I iced my back with Steven’s ice packs, ate breakfast, worried about how I was going to lead the webinar I was expected to host at 11:00 A.M..Sober by 11:00 I conducted my webinar aware that my back had to ride to the airport, board a plane and travel for five hours. Then the next day I was to travel to Bowling Green, Kentucky (1 ¼ hour), sit in a courtroom on hard benches (2 hours) and drive home (1 ¼ hour). All of these things came to pass along with my fragile back growing worse. The remainder of the week was hectic with little time to ice my back or stretch. I popped ibuprofen like candy. Friday I flew to Houston, conducted a home visit, became stuck in Houston overnight and wasn’t home until 6:00 P.M. Saturday, barely able to move without pain, I wrote my home visit report and began to prepare to fly to France.(My assistant, as she typed this told me I should be sure to emphasize that I rarely drink. I may have two glasses of wine a month and a glass of scotch every three months. She does not want the reader to think I’m a lush)Monday I got a cortisone shot and a prescription for 100 oxycotin and 100 muscle relaxers along with a steroid pac if needed it while in France. I had massages Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings.My back began to improve. I wondered what damage I had done to my kidneys and liver with all of these meds and liquor, but on Thursday at 11:00 A.M. I left for the airport to board the first leg of our flight to Europe.Here is where I began the losing battle with my curmudgeon complaining self. The check in process seemed to take forever; Marietta did not leave the counter with me. I found myself in the security line with a ticket and no passport. Marietta finally came with the passports. The security guard forced us out of the pre-PSA check line because our tickets weren’t printed correctly; Marietta left me to pick up the lunch she ordered along with mine.  I wasn’t sure I could carry hers, mine and my carry-on bag; at the gate our plane was posted one hour late; Marietta left me at the gate to go buy some hand cream. She took forever to return. All of this compounded my already high anxiety.As I observed me creating my own misery, I realized my father’s fear of travel, especially foreign travel had its grasp on my brain again. I saw how stupid my fears were but my awareness only barely mitigated them. At least I bit my tongue some when I was moved to take my anxiety out on Marietta.A few seconds of bliss found me once we took off in the plane from Nashville. We looked out our window at the Nashville skyline and surrounding countryside.  We were just above one layer of white clouds and below a layer of dark grey clouds with the sun shining on downtown Nashville through a break in the clouds. There below and to our west was a glowing gold city surrounded by May Nashville green countryside. It was if we were Dorothy and the tin man looking at the Emerald city for the first time. I had never seen Nashville in such a light.My plan was to take ibuprofen to get me to JFK airport and then to take oxycontin and my muscle relaxer along with wine in hopes that I would be unconscious for the flight to France.Once we boarded the plane for Paris we found our seats, which backed up against the wall of the toilet. As soon as I sat down, I took my pills. We waited in our seats for an hour before taking off. I stayed awake until the meal came with a small ¼ bottle of wine. Then I went to sleep. I dreamed several dreams I don’t remember. But I do remember one dream. It seemed real. A couple sitting just behind us (there was no couple sitting behind us) leaned forward to speak and mentioned something about how I looked, airplane pillow on top of my head and black blanket over the pillow to block out the light. The husband said, “What do I do to get where he is” talking about me and how out of it I was. I turned around looked at him, barely able to speak and said, “You need ¼bottle of wine, one oxycontin and one muscle relaxer.” I regained my previous pose under the pillow and blanket and returned to my sleep.When we disembarked from the plane, I felt no pain in my back. We proceeded easily through customs. Our bags arrived late. I thought I was up to walking the mile to catch the train to Paris, but once walking, my hip and back began to tighten with each step. As we passed the bus pick-up point, we stopped, hoping to buy a bus ticket from the airport to Paris.We couldn’t buy a bus ticket because our credit card did not possess a computer chip and the machine would not take money. In the confusion around the purchase of the bus ticket Marietta set down her baby blue tote bag containing her cell phone and her Ipad.And you know what happened when we abandoned our plans to take the bus in favor of the more expensive taxi. I took more pills in the taxi on the way to the Hotel. Once in our room at the hotel, Marietta realized she had lost her bag.A disappointed Marietta and a trying not to be irritated David, took a three hour nap.When I woke and dressed my back felt better. John and Rita came by our hotel to walk with us to dinner, where we met two other couples who were their good friends from Park City, Utah, who happened to be in Paris at this time.If you read my last travel journal entry, you remember John and Rita as the couple who live above our condo in Park City. Seventy year old John, the handsome, fit, thin as a rail, retired engineer and Rita, his beautiful, much younger wife for 48 years, a meticulous fireball of energy and kindness.Both art experts, they helped me begin my last trip to Paris with a visit to a Museum of Russian art in Springfield, Utah. As neighbors in Park City, we shared many hikes, meals, concerts and stories over the years and have become very good friends. They are the reason we feel at home in Utah when we are there.Before we left our hotel I took my two pills, hoping to also drink a glass of wine and feel no pain at dinner. We sat, ordered and began our meal. I ordered kidneys. A rich butter cheese sauce covered the bits of kidney which I had never tasted before. I drank two glasses of wine with dinner. Rita looked across the table at me and said, “David you are high aren’t you?” I nodded yes and ate more food.Later, I felt my stomach roll much like it did when I was at dinner with Steve. I tried to kick Marietta under the table and could not reach her. I tried waving to get her attention and could not. I said, hoping she would hear me, “I’m about to faint and I’m getting up to go get some air.” I stood, walked three steps and that’s all I remember, until I opened my eyes and found myself on my back laying in the seat of a booth with a waiter’s face looking at me with concern saying French words I didn’t understand. The next thing I knew, Marietta and I were in cab going back to our hotel.In this second fainting episode I felt the same wonderful peace surrounding me. I speculate that I was losing blood pressure and that this must be how we feel as we die. Somehow this gave me comfort. I am not ready to die, but I was turning 68 in a few days, one year closer to death and somehow I was less afraid of its sting. My back pain, now that’s another matter.The next day I awoke refreshed and encouraged, less back pain, ready to go to Annecy with John, Rita and Marietta, who surrounded me on three sides with French speakers.  After some hassle at Jean De Gaulle airport Hertz, after Marietta tried in vain to find her tote bag at the airport lost and found and after an hour and a half of stop and go bumper to bumper Paris traffic, we were on our way to Annecy and I was on my way to look at the region that produced the genius of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Jean-Jacques as I call him.“What interests you about Rousseau?” Rita asked in the car as we zipped through the French countryside filled with blooming chestnut trees and emerald green pastures.“I see alot of myself in Jean-Jacques,” I answered. “He didn’t let ideas of others overrule his experience. He had many limits. He read slowly as I do. His ambition to be a great, important, musician were thwarted. My ambitions have never been achieved. He fell back on writing much by accident. He wrote from a compulsion as I do. His character was significantly flawed and he was acutely aware of how flawed and lacking in social grace he was. I feel the same. He demanded of himself that he examine himself honestly and present an accurate picture of his many character failures. He had original ideas that became especially influential after his death. His writing was much superior to his life. I wish that were true of me. I don’t feel as tortured as he did, nor am I as paranoid, but I am very capable of creating my own misery. In his Letter to d’Alembert in reference to society he said… ‘I see only unfeeling masters and groaning peoples, wars that concern nobody and leaves everyone desolated…and subjects who are poorest when the state is richest.’ He saw civilization rewarding inauthenticity as do I and that is successful members are actors role playing in daily life. I agree with these sentiments.“He believed that he was no better than anyone else and he tried to never be beholden to anyone or to pretend to be superior. He loved nature and tried to walk in the woods daily, hoping to discover an unfamiliar plant.”We were now moving along with the traffic on the Autoroute du Soleil heading south, passing forests, fields of grass with wild yellow flowers and corn and soybean crops. John drove and I sat next to him on a special pillow Rita gave me for my back. I had taken my oxycontin and muscle relaxer and I had more at the ready. It should be noted that Rita’s back was also recovering. That Brookstone pillow was meant for her comfort not mine. Rita and Marietta sat in the back surrounded by luggage because of the small size of the car’s trunk.John asked, “What did you not like about Rousseau?”“He was a petty thief,” I answered. “He lied when it suited him, as a young man. Virtue came to him with success. He stole a ribbon and let a maid take the fall for him. He flirted outrageously but he hid behind false righteousness because of his fear of being unable to perform when the sexual challenge was proffered. His whole philosophy was a justification for his sins.”“How so?” Marietta inquired.“Well, he was a well-behaved young boy by all accounts in contrast to his brother who was a louse and who resented Jean-Jacques perhaps because their mother died giving birth to Jean-Jacques. When his father abandoned him at age ten to avoid arrest in Geneva and his aunt left with his father, his moral decline began. He never overtly rebelled. His misbehavior was passive aggressive. He said of himself at the end of his life that his strength was ‘not in action but in resistance.’“He described the beginnings of his moral decline this way: ‘I was bold in my father’s house, discreet in my uncles; I became fearful at my master’s age (13-16), and from then on I was a lost child.’ He was never able to regain his sense of being acceptable and valued.”“So what does this have to do with his philosophy?” Marietta asked again.“Well,” I said. “He explains his misbehavior saying natural man, unencumbered by desires and ambitions placed on him by society is basically good, (just as he was as a young boy) but when man comes in contact with society he is corrupted. The enemy of man is culture.“And interestingly, when Jean-Jacques was abandoned by his father, his moral decline began. It was not his fault in his mind. It was the culture’s fault, society’s fault, the fault of all the books he read and the cravings they put in his mind. It was because he was an abandoned child. He offered many excuses for all his many sins, the greatest of which was that he abandoned five infants to an orphanage in Paris. His biographer speculates that all of them were dead before they were two years old.“His excuse was society made me do it. He fathered these children with a woman whom he considered beneath his station. They weren’t married. It was probably this class difference that helped him be less anxious about his sexual performance with her. The resulting children were an embarrassment for him in society’s eyes. Hence, he abandoned them, something he would never have done if he lived in prehistoric times when all men were equal, a time he admitted that probably never existed, but should and could exist without the demands the culture places on humans.“I don’t admire these justifications in behavior that I don’t think can be justified. Like Jean-Jacques, I yearn to be known and loved, transparent and accepted. But this seems painfully naive to me now at age 68.”We arrived in Annecy with GPS help and found ourselves circling our destination in a labyrinth of narrow one way streets in 5:00 P.M. traffic. Once parked, we went to John and Rita’s where Zavier, a twenty-something man with long blond dread locked hair in hip designer clothes, met us. He looked like he walked off the pages of Paris Match. It turned out he did work in the fashion industry, living six months in Paris and six months here. He bought this seventh floor, corner balcony, one bedroom apartment as an investment.The previous renters left the place in a horrible mess yesterday, he told us in English. He and two friends spent the day cleaning the apartment. From the apartment we saw the lake and the skyline of the old city surrounded by mountains, some snowcapped in the distance.The glass bowl on the table contained fresh raspberries, strawberries and cherries. I can’t describe the flavor. The raspberries were the sharpest combination of sweet tartness I ever tasted. The strawberries tasted as if they were just picked and the cherries were ripe and juicy.The apartment was decorated with the eye of a designer and someone with a sense of a good bargain, the basic color being off-white. The kitchen had new appliances. The refrigerator was the size of a small chest, no freezer. If you were to eat your own cooking, you would be shopping in the local market every day. The apartment came with two bikes but no parking space.We left John and Rita’s to drive two small blocks, a stone’s throw, to our apartment. Jean Louis, his femme Claire and our new neighbor, Pat (English speaking American around 70 years old) waited for us.I was so anxious about connecting to the internet for my next day webinar that I was unable to relax and sit with them at the dinner table that could seat ten people in the middle of a 13 X 25 room that was a combination dinning and sitting room. The Salle du bain (bathroom) consisted of three small rooms, a closet for the toilette next to the front door, a room with a Jacuzzi bathtub, sink, mirror and another closet with a shower and a small, small sink. There were two bedrooms, one with twin beds and one with a queen size bed. The well-equipped gallery kitchen was just off the front foyer, with a small refrigerator and freezer, dish washer, clothes washer and dryer and a relatively new electric stove and oven.Jean Louis opened a liter bottle of orange soda, poured drinks and we sat and visited with him. He and Carla spoke little English, but Pat, our neighbor and John, Rita and Marietta conversed easily with them. He invited us to come to lunch with him at his place in the country on France’s largest lake, Lake Bourget next Sunday. After a pleasant conversation and Jean Louis installing his 15 digit password with 1’s that looked just like 7’s and 7’s that looked like 1’s and letters that were even more confusing, they left us alone in the apartment to unpack.One of the best things about our apartment were the books covering the North wall, many of them focused on art and philosophy.Some of the books were photographic studies of the culture of the ordinary French citizen in the first half of the 20^th century of French working, selling, French cityscapes, men playing boci, fishing along the Seine, families on the beach, women at the market, men unloading boats, country weddings, intimate family scenes around the table, lovers and families on picnics at the lake’s edge, etc. Looking at these photos and French landscapes painted by Monet, Cezanne and Renoir helped us feel connected to the French people, the French countryside and city scenes that we witnessed as our feet walked on French dirt and our ears heard the music of people speaking French.The first night we strolled in the old city and found the café Jean Louis and Pat recommended, Café Europeen. We ate, laughed, talked, and drank wine, three house bottles (smaller than a corked bottle) of wine. John and Rita explained why the house wines often do not have as much effect in France as wine in the U.S. does. It is the alcohol content. These wines are young, still in the cask, not yet fully fermented. So they have more impact than grape juice but less than the normal wine with 12% fermentation. I ordered sweetbreads for dinner. They were wonderful, much better than the kidney the night before.Once home, delicious sleep and dreams enveloped me. Our plan for the next day was to take a bike ride around Lac d’Annecy.We rented bikes and helmets and we were off for a ride on a bike path on the west side of the lake. Annecy is a bike friendly place, not car friendly. It can cost 20 euros a day to park your car. Bicycles are everywhere. Streets are often clogged with cars, but bikes and scooters get around the bottlenecks. The bus system is well used. The sidewalks and parks are full of pedestrians, women coming from the market, pulling a trolley cart with baguettes protruding from the top, men walking with large satchels strapped over one shoulder then across the body to the satchel just below the opposite hip, young people zipping about on scooters, skateboards or in-line skates. We rented our bikes and slowly pedaled on a dedicated, paved bike path beside the lake, the cleanest, clearest lake in all of Europe. You could see the bottom clearly at a depth of five feet. When you put your hand in the snow fed lake, it would jump back out of its own accord because of the cold.What surprised us was there was no visible fish, minnows or reptile life in or around the lake. Loons, ducks and swans swam about, but not many for a lake this size.We biked past a large stream with a fish ladder, several parks and children’s playgrounds, one with electric toy cars with child drivers hunching their shoulders, gripping the steering wheels with both hands and earnestly racing slowly around a small 50 meter track. Some serious bikers dressed in spandex racing clothes zoomed past us in well ordered pelotons. Parents riding with a young toddler buckled into a bike child’s seat passed us going the other way. Wild flowers filled the fields knee high with yellow and purple blooms; chestnut and locust trees dropped white petals on the pavement from their blooms above.Marietta said we biked seven miles. (To me it felt more like ten) We had a slow lunch at a resort café next to the lake, a jambon sandwich and a view of the lake, the boats, the traffic on the road on the opposite side and the castles, homes, hotels and resorts surrounding the lake. Clearly there was serious wealth in this place. I felt grateful to be sitting in the sun absorbing the novel sights, sounds and tastes that filled my senses. My marginality to this place pierced my awareness and humbled me. A sense of importance surrounded the other people in this place who all seemed to have a purpose. My envy resolved into relief that I had no responsibility for the moment, given my condition. I had my pain pills ready in my pocket and was glad I didn’t have need of them.On the way back I felt the call that horses feel when they are headed home toward their barn, except my call came from the bed in our apartment. I couldn’t seem to stay with Marietta, Rita and John. John’s consideration is such a contrast to my impatience. He was careful to be sure no one was left too far behind. He stopped and fixed Rita’s chain that came off the gear. He coped with a warped back tire on his bike without complaint. I wanted to behave more like him and remain connected to our peloton, but I just couldn’t get myself to resist the impulse to push myself forward. I stopped and waited for them to catch up a few times, then finally I gave up all pretense of being part of our community and sped ahead all the way back to the bike shop.As I rode my bike and watched French parents tending their children in the park, I remembered recent Francophile books about what Americans can learn from French parenting practices. Rousseau wrote the most important childcare book from the Enlightenment period. That’s right Jean-Jacques, the guy who abandoned five children, the son of a mother who died in child birth and father who gave him up at ten years old. He wrote a book on the rearing and education of children, Emile.He made several cogent recommendations in Emile for rearing and teaching children. He observed that “You have enjoyed more in anticipation than ever you will in reality. Imagination adorns what we desire and abandons it once it’s possessed,” a point confirmed in recent psychological research. Rousseau believed it was horribly wrong to teach children to fear authority. He believed children should be taught what interests them, that they could be trusted to be curious and to learn from life and life’s difficulties. Once taught by natural reality, they will choose correctly, he thought,  because they will understand what life and nature requires and they will know it is not about who’s in charge, but about how the world is, limits imposed by human existence, not by a person.Children will learn because they are self-centered and they push limits until they find them. When limits are artificially imposed by fear of authority, children will continue to push until they find real limits and learn to disrespect authority in the process.Authorities, parents and teachers, should allow children to discover these natural limits and help children discover ideas and behaviors that will work within natural limits.Rousseau wanted a child to “see with his own eyes, feeling with his own heart and governed by no authority other than reason.”Emile begins with this opening sentence: “Everything is good, as it comes from the hands of the author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”Rousseau wanted to free his Emile from society, to help him discover natural laws of reason. In Emile he wrote:All of our wisdom consists in servile prejudices and all of our customs are only subjection, discomfort and constraint. Civil man is born, lives and dies in slavery; at birth they sew him into swaddling clothes, and at death they nail him into a coffin. So long as he retains human form he is enchained by our institutions.”The task of a parent or teacher, according to Rousseau, was to protect a child from society’s expectations and pressures or at least postpone them so that his mythical Emile would have an opportunity to develop his own self.Rousseau believed each person had a unique temperament or personality that needed freedom to flourish.He wanted tutors to create orchestrated challenges that the child would fail and from his mistakes he would learn with the kind and compassionate tutelage of his mentor.Rousseau put emotions before reason and knowledge. He thought memorization was foolish and books too often confirmed unjust and evil conventions. To motivate learning he suggested that tutors begin with kindness and compassion and trust a child’s natural desire to learn and test limits. And when the child inevitably fails, use compassion and kindness to help him learn from the mistake.Rousseau’s thoughts about women were exactly what he complained about in society. They came from the stereotypes and prejudices of the time. For example, he believed, “Every girl should have her mother’s religion and every woman’s her husbands.” He gave women power only in the home.  He said, “Women should reign in the family as a minister does in state, getting herself commanded to do what she wants to do. In this sense the best households are the ones in which the woman has the most authority.”Rousseau believed nature intended for females to concern themselves with clothes and adornment. “She is entirely her doll, she puts all of her coquetry into it, and she won’t leave it like that; she is waiting for a moment when she can be her own doll.”He said a woman is, “made to obey so imperfect a being as man, who is full of vices and always full of faults, she must learn early to endure injustice and to bear her husband’s wrongs without complaint.”I am on this trip with four women, staying in an apartment with three. You have met Marietta and Rita. You will meet Karen, age 40 and her mother Jodie later. I don’t think any of these women “would endure and bear her husband’s wrongs without complaint.” We turned in our rental bikes, walked three blocks to our apartment and collapsed in bed for a two-hour nap, a drug-free sleep of the dead. I awoke from our refreshing sleep pleased that my back survived and perhaps even prospered from the bike ride. We walked the two blocks to Rita and John’s apartment, the table was set and John and Rita working in tandem like a machine; John pouring wine for us and returning to the counter to slice a baguette and some cheese; Rita tending to the pasta and sauce, while John sliced tomatoes and cucumbers for the salad.Marietta helped while I looked at the seven story view of the lake. I offered to help but the kitchen was already crowded and I couldn’t figure out what I could do. John and Rita denied my request to help and Marietta didn’t seem to be embarrassed by my lack of participation in the preparations.Rita called for us to take our seats and we did. The apartment smelled like the pasta sauce. It contained basil, tomatoes,… We had a wonderful meal settling into our new world. Today our friends arrived for a five day visit. Jodie, Marietta’s friend for forty years and her daughter Karen. Jodie is retired and lives in Nashville. Karen is Athletic Director at Harpeth Hall, an exclusive private school in Nashville. They both abandoned their moderately accepting (with minor protests) husbands.John and Marietta left at 7:00 A.M. to meet their 8:00 A.M. arriving flight in Geneva. They returned around 10:00 depositing a wilted Jodie and a moderately tired Karen in our apartment. Marietta gave them a snack and took them to the marche.When they returned, we all walked to Rita and John’s for lunch. John had brought in the small two person table and chairs form the patio and put it at the end of their four person dining table.John and Rita’s well choreographed dance was putting the finishing touches on lunch. John offered mid-day Kir, a mix of white wine and Kir. I was happy with “eau.” Karen and Jodie marveled at the view of the Lac d’Annecy. I spotted a couple lying on their backs on the ground in the park below, the woman’s head resting on a man’s shoulder. They laughed and cuddled together under the shade of a large spruce tree, unaware of my eyes above.“Lunch served,” Rita said breaking my voyeur reverie. I went inside to a beautiful beet salad. We toasted our friendship and began our repast. Jodie and Karen asked about John and Rita’s children. Two grown, Alex and Faith.  Faith with two girls, 9 and 7 living in Blacksburg, Virginia, married to an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, loved her role as mother, but was considering returning to a career path soon. She had an MBA and helped support her husband through grad school at Standford.Alex works in San Diego, married two years to five months pregnant Corine, who teaches yoga. They have an eight year old daughter, Gigi, who is excited about her new baby sister. Alex works at Illumina, whose stock John and I own. (Go Illumina.)John spent his career with Dupont and they lived in various places in Europe for much of John’s early working life, including a small village, Lancey, just outside of Geneva Switzerland. Annecy was a frequent day trip for hiking with their children. Their memories of beautiful Annecy by the lake is why they chose to come here.Rita’s beautiful salad contained colorful arugula and sweet bib lettuce, sliced English cucumbers, sliced boiled eggs, prosciutto and roasted purple-red beets sliced. She made her own salad dressing with olive oil, vinegar, mustard and cream.We had ice cream, fresh strawberries and meringue for dessert. The meal seemed to give Karen and Jodie a needed boost.  They wanted to stay awake until 8:30 P.M. or so to reset their internal body clock closer to Annecy time.After lunch Marietta took Karen and Jodie on an Lake Annecy boat tour, while I wrote in my journal. That lasted a couple of hours. They returned took an hour nap and by then it was dinner time.Jodie, Karen, Marietta and I went to dinner at L’Etage, a recommended sidewalk café in the medieval part of town, two blocks from our apartment. I ordered sweetbreads, again.Cecil, the forty year old restaurant owner took our order.Marietta asked him, “What is your best thing?” in French. “Quel est votre plus beaux chose?”He answered in very good English, “It is our special, the same special we have had here for 40 years since the restaurant opened, steak and fries.”“I want that,” Marietta said.Karen and Jodie tried to order a steak to split and received two steaks. We thought with three 12 oz steaks we would have meat to bring home for salad the next day. Not so. At the end of the meal all of the steaks were gone.Jodie and Karen also ordered escargot. Marietta tasted the sauce and proclaimed,” The sauce needs more red wine to give it a bit more acid bite.”When Cecil came to deliver the steaks, Marietta told him, “You need to add a bit more red wine to the sauce.”“No, I don’t,” Cecil said. “I like it just like this.”“But I think the sauce needs more heft,” Marietta replied.“No, more red wine would overwhelm the subtle flavors and spices in the sauces.”“But…”“No ma’am. This is my restaurant if you want to change the sauce then come into my office in the back and we will talk about the price of the restaurant.”This ended that conversation. The next morning John, Rita, Marietta, and I left Jodie and Karen after a croissant, jam, butter, fresh strawberries and coffee or tea breakfast and drove to Lake Bourget, the largest natural lake in France for our lunch with Jean Louis and Claire. Our time there was cut short because my Sunday webinar began at 3:30 and I needed to be back to our apartment to be in front of my computer then.We took the scenic route there and were somewhat lost, but felt mostly lost much of the way there. It was difficult for John to keep his eyes on the road because of the magnificent views of the mountains and lakes below. The roads curved and at some points were only wide enough for one motorcycle but somehow a car had to extrude itself between the side of the mountain and the cliff. There was one unpleasant moment when a driver coming from the opposite direction stopped, thought he could not pass when he could, expected us to back up with a truck behind us or move over to the right when we were only one millimeter from the mountain wall. Eventually the truck behind us backed up and we did as well. This move really created no more room but it helped the obstinate demanding driver save face and he inched forward past us and we were able to proceed.Once at our destination, Chorux, Jean Louis met us standing by the road and pointed us into his driveway. His home had a beautiful view of the lake some 300 meters below. To our left on flat land next to the lake Caesar camped his army on his way to conquer Gaul in 52 BC.This lake was much less developed than Lake Annecy but no less beautiful. There were a few boats on the water.  Jean Louis explained to us that once 180 fishermen fished this lake for a living. Now only two continued. Jean Louis and Claire had a beautiful yard with a cherry tree full of delicious ripe cherries, two apple trees, and a small garden of grape vines and other plants that Jean Louis no longer tended, and flowers everywhere.After some conversation and a glass of wine, we sat down to a feast prepared by Jean Louis with Claire’s help but Claire insisted on giving Jean Louis the lions share of the praise.We had terrine from the region as appetizers, fresh trout recently caught from the lake, a scalloped potato dish cooked with three cheeses. During the conversation around lunch Jean Louis told us that he served in the foreign office in Cameroon and later French Guiana. He was head of the employment office. Cameroon was still a French colony and French Guiana was now a part of France just as Hawaii is part of the United States. Claire had served for a time as Chief Librarian at the library in Annecy. They had two grown children and grandchildren.Jean Louis seemed to appreciate my interest in Jean Jacques and he informed us of a very fine museum in Chambry, just south of the lake, where Rousseau lived for a time in his early twenties.Jean Louis and Claire were both retired now in their late fifties I’d guess. They lived six months in the winter in our apartment in Annecy and six months in the summer in their home on Lake Bourget. They rent our apartment in the summer and live in it in the winter. They have plans to sell it to fund their travel plans.Our visit with Claire and Jean Louis was so delightful that we hoped to continue it. So John invited them to dinner at a fine restaurant on Lake Bourget in ten days.I hustled us back in the car so we would be back in Annecy in time for my webinar. We made it in plenty of time, thanks to John’s good driving and his ability to ignore Heather, our GPS voice, and follow Jean Louis’s direction to the Autoroute du Soliel instead.In our first week in Annecy we took a day trip to Lyon, France’s second largest city about 100 kilometers south.In Lyon we visited Lyon’s version of Notre Dame. It seemed as opulent, grand and extravagant as the Paris version. I felt the bile rising in me as I looked at what represented years of back breaking labor, for which the priests either raised money or convinced people to voluntarily work for God.“They were selling snake oil,” I said to John.“What do you mean?” he asked as we stood next to the Cathedral looking out over the beautiful skyline of Lyon.“The priests promised eternal life to the people who contributed and a place in heaven and what did they get for it? They preyed on people’s fears and sold them superstition rather than reality and the people gave money and time to build this grand building and came here to listen to more blather about hell fire and who is saved, while many priests lived an opulent life in palaces attended to by young boys they abused or women they wouldn’t marry. They lived a lie pretending and cheating the poor they were supposed to be serving. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rousseau and me too have little respect for the clergy, who built these cathedrals.”“Well,” John said, “I don’t know. This famous architect was commissioned to build the parliament building in Bangladesh, the poorest country in the world, a country constantly beset by flood, typhoons, disease and famine. He built this grand opulent building that is the height of modern extravagance. You would think that the people of Bangladesh would be furious at this waste of money. But they aren’t. They are proud such a building was built there and they want to show it off.“So what was the church in 1300 supposed to do? Should they give the money back to the poor? Peron tried that in Argentina which, before Peron, was the 15^th wealthiest country in the world and after Peron is now the 120 on the list. Peron wasted the money. Here and in Bangladesh they at least have grand buildings to show for it, buildings that draw the attention of thousand’s maybe millions of people a year. That does something for the economy. It is not too much different than the Grand Ol Opry or the Rhyman Auditorium or the Parthenon in Nashville. Build it and they will come as Kevin Costner said.”“I never thought of it that way,” I said, stunned by this new perspective. I began to think of Rousseau and the other voices of the Enlightenment. Diderot, Voltaire, Locke and Montesquieu and to a lesser extent Rousseau had to kill God in order to get their message across. If God existed, then the fact that some men are more fortunate than others is ordained by God. Rulers all over the world had justified their position this way for centuries. If all men are created equal, if there are natural laws that apply to all, if all men, have the right to pursue happiness in their unique way that makes differences descriptive rather than a source of status on a better/than, less/than ladder; if God exists then why does God allow such inequality and privilege for a few at the expense of the many? To sell the enlightenment ideas of equality its philosophers had to attack God and the church.Their vehicle was science and reason. To Diderot and Voltaire, religion was groundless superstition used by the powerful to control the masses. Rousseau agreed that the dogma of religion was silly and used to control and justify injustice, but Rousseau believed that there was a divine order, that the laws of science and the harmony in music proved that there was some force behind the existence of life. Rousseau, like Jefferson, later, was a deist. The fact that he made room for God in his cosmology made him more generally acceptable than the other enlightenment philosophers to the readers of his time.Rousseau hated science as an instrument of society and he loved nature and its laws that were obvious to him. He focused on nature, its laws and harmonies that could be seen on a walk in the forest and heard in music. Botany and music were Rousseau’s passion.So what would I do with the money and the energy that the people gave to the church instead of building palaces for the clergy and a venue for the clergy to sell their snake oil?I would rather build businesses like some Jesuits did in monasteries that gave people products like wine and cheese, or trained dogs to herd sheep or something that occupied people in productive work that added and did not take away.I can even see producing art but not art that justified the right of the powerful to be seen as better than others or that suggests priests are serving God, while living a like kings building palaces that served no purpose.I can see why the French and other Europeans have rejected religion. Its excesses are well-documented in this Cathedral in Lyon and to me repulsive. The first and second estates, the clergy and the nobility were allied against the common people to exploit and control them as Seiyes wrote during the French Revolution.Now in the United States it is the military and the wealthy one percent who align to exploit and control the poor with the help of some in the media, the fourth estate, Fox News, etc. The military has replaced the clergy using fear and patriotism, promising greatness and superiority as their snake oil to seduce tax dollars for fighter jets, warships and computers that spy on our own citizens. (As you can see some of Rousseau’s outrage is contagious). My BirthdayIt’s my birthday, the day of another travel misadventure. Marietta scheduled a cooking class in Lyon that day at 9:00 A.M. with John to drive Jodie, Karen, Rita and Marietta while I planned to stay here, write, kick around town and ride my bicycle. They left before I awoke at 8:00 A.M. I showered, ate my croissant breakfast and started out the door to go for a morning bike ride. At the front door I looked on the key hook for apartment keys. They weren’t there. I texted Marietta asking if she had both sets. She texted back that indeed she did.I think this has been my biggest curmudgeon test so far. I tried to talk myself down from my angry pity party. I wanted to write anyway. This would give me the day to do it. There was plenty of food in the refrigerator. There was laundry to do and dishes to wash. I wanted to work on my Southern Psychotherapy project. None of this self-talk could completely appease my anger.It wasn’t just this. Once Jodie and Karen came she was too busy to read anything I wrote. Rita noticed what was normal Marietta. She left her purse laying on the floor in the middle of a dress shop while she tried on clothes. She lost a second phone that day. She seemed oblivious to the needs of the group and often Rita and I (both with aching backs) stood moving from one leg to the other unsuccessfully trying to find a way to stand where our backs didn’t hurt while she looked at one more thing.I think it was how Marietta seemed to ignore everyone else (especially me) when her best friend, Jodie, arrived that added fuel to my ire. Don’t misunderstand, Jodie is a great person; best friend to Marietta. Jodie commiserates with me about Marietta’s foibles and is more than kind to me. And her daughter, Karen, is a delight.No, the problem is what happens when they showed up and Marietta became so excited that she walked off with both sets of keys without thinking. See you can tell by reading this that I’m still sizzling. (Marietta just walked out on the balcony where I am writing, looked over my shoulder, read the above paragraph and wisely disappeared).The cooking school party did not return home until 8:30 P.M.. John, the chauffer to the four women students, the fellow who had to drive through rush hour traffic both ways, who left in plenty of time, listened to the British voice of the GPS narrator (whom he affectionately called Heather) killed time in Lyon after he found the art museum he wanted to visit closed, who came to gather his charges at the appointed hour and was required to wait 45 minutes outside the cooking school, near an after-school daycare, who couldn’t find a parking place and when he did was followed by three police who suspected him of stalking children, who had to drive again in rush hour traffic with four giggling women who had eaten a gourmet meal and had finished off three bottles of wine, who also believed John should consider them as his heroes for rescuing him from these police officers following him when they emerged from their class and into his car.This John seemed elated to drop off his car and invite me to a birthday dinner at Le’Elage. He gave me a birthday present, plastic silver circular cards that when folded correctly and put in the top of a wine bottle guaranteed a no drop pour.We commiserated about our sad plight over fois grois and ___ and somehow that made my birthday better.The next day, Marietta took Jodie and Karen for a walking and shopping tour in the oldest part of Annecy near the lake and around and over the canals. I took a bike ride to Talloires on the opposite end of the lake about 34 kilometers or 20 miles away. I arrived at 1:30, took a seat in a restaurant patio overlooking the lake. It was a French holiday, the Day of Ascension, a left over religious holiday that the French still observe (on a Thursday). People lay on the grass picnicking, children played soccer and hula hooped. Some even dared to swim in the 50° lake water on a 75° day. I felt I was truly where the French came to play and enjoy themselves.We took the boat taxi back from Talloires to Annecy. It stopped four times on the way and took 45 minutes to get us back.We passed a wake skier behind an $8,000 Nautique boat, a couple other traditional water skiers pulled by a rope following or trying to follow behind the boat. There were ducks and a few swans swimming about. As we neared Annecy rowers in three single sculls formed a starting line ready to race. A covey of sail boats in a regatta raced from one side of the width to the lake to the other; couples and families drove rented 50 horsepower outboard small ski boats out form the Annecy dock. A few kayaks paddled near the shore along with several leg powered paddle boats.Once ashore I took my bike back to the rental shop and Marietta and I walked home while Karen and Jodie looked for a public toilette.That night we went to eat at ______. This was a mainly cheese restaurant famous for raclette and fondue. This was to be my birthday meal. We shared melting cheese over tasty very well cooked boiled new potatoes or bread with cold cuts of smoked beef, duck or hard sausage.At the end of the meal I thanked all present for celebrating my day by reading them these words:My Friends,You chose to celebrate my birthday with me tonight. Karen, you are        yet to really understand the significance of turning 68. The others of you          know only too well. It is at the same time an accomplishment, a point on the            race course that tells you that you have come a long way and can be proud to    stand here and yet it comes with the sure promise that I (we) have one    less             year to live, for me several less bike rides and racing heart beats that      push   as much oxygen into my brain as it will hold; this many less words to be        written; this many patients that I will no longer see, this many less hugs to           give and to receive.It frightens me to stand here in a strange land, hearing strange,   unfamiliar sounds, being challenged to learn another word; to find a path to a new place and see people do things so differently.I have not looked forward to thinking these thoughts, yet they are here for me to consider, for anyone to consider who passes this point, mean           threatening thoughts. Children don’t need friends to help them face       birthdays. But we do at this age. You are here to see me move past this        point today, sharing with me this frightening moment, knowing full well            what it means to me and to you, as you hold me in your eyes and remind me        that I have mattered. Thank you! The Path to Rousseau and the EnlightenmentToday John and I drove Karen and Jodie to the Geneva airport. Then John showed me some of the sights of the city. On a tiny island park where Lake Leman became the Rhone River in the center of the city that once reviled Rousseau and banned his books, we found a statue of Rousseau dressed in his unique cossack, sitting, legs crossed, pen in one hand, hands in his lap, head slightly down as if he was lost in thought.That day we saw the U.N. Headquarters, many upscale stores on Geneva’s version of 5^th Avenue, well tended parks, the streets cleaned, most people well-dressed, no sign of homeless and many Mercedes, BMW and more Ferrari’s in one place than I have ever seen.Up the hill from the river was a preserved historical Geneva with buildings that dated back centuries. A contrast to the modern Geneva that bordered the lake, with 4-lane streets and electric buses. In old Geneva the streets appeared more like cobble stone paths; restaurants spilled out into small parks under giant Plan trees, expensive jewelry and antique shops sat next to souvenir shops.We wandered up the hill to a large medieval church. It was still an active church, housing services for a variety of Protestant denominations. Near there we came upon the International Museum of the Reformation (starring John Calvin). John and I went inside. I hoped to get a balanced story of John Calvin, the good and the bad, but this museum showed only the good John Calvin and the persecution of the poor Protestants. I saw no mention of Calvin’s rigid intolerance and his abuse of power in Geneva where he proved again the old maxim Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, no mention of Calvin torturing and decapitating critics or branding Copernicus a fraud or making refusal to take the Eucharist a crime or prescribing a dress code for each social class or prohibiting singing and dancing or denouncing independent reasoning as ‘vanity.’Nor was there any mention of Martin Luther being bi-polar or paranoid in the extreme in the later part of his life.Marietta asked what I learned from my visit to the museum. I explained that the Waldensians movement in the 13^th century started the thought process that culminated in the enlightenment.  If the goal was to create the belief (in spite of a rigid caste system) that all men were created equal, then something had to be done with the Catholic belief system that supported the caste system by saying wealthy people were guaranteed a place in heaven because they could pay for indulgences and the gates to heaven would be open for them. Therefore money made you superior to those without it. All men are not created equal in medieval Catholicism. Further evidence of man’s inequality is that God is in control of the universe, according to Catholic teachings, so God gave authority to the powerful, favoring some people over others.The Waldensians proposed human goodness as the key to heaven, not money. This meant that all people started out equal and what made some better than others was how close people came to the perfection of Christ.Martin Luther agreed that you can’t buy your way into heaven and that people are saved by grace not by works. This pushed the notion of human equality under God a bit further, but it left the problem that if God was in charge, then why do some humans have more power, privilege and wealth than others if God did not intend it to be so.John Calvin took a step backwards and proposed a new caste system as rigid as the old, based on the favor of “ayatollah” Calvin’s mind and in accordance with the 12 elders and the council.Diderot and Voltaire solved the problem of the caste system by doing away with the notion of God. Without a God we are all the same. There is no transcendent justification for power, wealth or privilege. Getting rid of God opened the door for reason, science and democracy.Rousseau did not have to kill off God to make all men equal. For him God created the world and its natural order and natural law. It was part of God’s natural order that all men were created equal.  In fact these laws that science, reason and learning discovered were the proof there was a God and that all people were subject to this natural order equally. However, after God created this perfect masterpiece, Rousseau believed that God withdrew and human society messed up his creation. If man had been left in his most primitive state, alone in nature, separate from society, God’s creation would have remained perfect.(After explaining all this to Marietta she said, “So is that why people want to move to the suburbs.”)John and I left Geneva to visit Lancey, a small town outside Geneva, where Rita and John lived for five years while he worked at DuPont. This was indeed an enchanted place set in the middle of pastures and vineyards. It was in Switzerland, less than 1 kilometer from France and ten minutes from where John once worked. His small house (2,000 sq. ft.) was worth over $1,000,000 in 1980. They could afford to rent the house because DuPont subsidized their rent.We ate at Lancey’s only restaurant. We had the Plat de jour, small fish the French called perch with fries and a mixture of sautéed vegetables, eggplant, squash, mushrooms and red peppers.Parking was scarce so we left our car at the restaurant and explored Lancey. We went inside the local Catholic Church and explored the cemetery. This church still served an active congregation. Flowers sat next to the alter almost fresh from the service the day before, the Day of Ascension. This church was much less ornate than the Notre Dames in Paris and in Lyon and much more inviting and warm, not so ostentatious or grandiose.As we retraced the steps of John’s past life in Lancey, we saw maybe five people and perhaps ten cars during our two hour visit. We found John’s jogging path around the town water tower in the middle of vineyards and pastures. Two men tended the vineyard. We asked them about a large building with the lettersGAUMON on the top less than 300 meters away. They knew nothing about it. It was in France and they were in Switzerland.On the way home we crossed the border going on a back road (not the 4-lane autoroute) with an empty building next to the road that once served as a border check point.We drove toward Annecy. John wanted to find a restaurant that he remembered in the hills between Lancey and Annecy. We saw a sign to a restaurant and turned off the highway onto a small country road that wound up and up the mountain. We were about to give up when we came upon what looked like a large version of the Von Trapp house in Sound of Music, with a spectacular view of Jura Mountains and Annecy by the lake in the far off distance. It was a grand and magic place, one where only the rich could stay. We drove into the driveway entry circle and drove out quickly once we realized that it cost money to breathe the air in this place.We wound our way back to Annecy, where I found the bed in our apartment and a two-hour nap. The next day we went on my pilgrimage in earnest into the land of Rousseau. I had visited his statue in Geneva, the Rue de Rousseau in Annecy, the canal of Warren and walked the winding narrow streets by the canals in Annecy where Rousseau once walked. Now we are headed to Chambery and the Musée de Charmettes.  This was the actual house and land where, at age 20, Rousseau lost his virginity to Madame Warren, whom he visualized as the woman who replaced his mother.This farm house outside of Chambery was the place where Rousseau would develop his prodigious intellect. Madame Warren or “Maman” as he called her, exposed him to the best literature of the day. He loved reading alone sitting in the garden or on a log beside a path in the wood nearby. He had a special way of absorbing ideas:“On reading each author, I acquired a habit of following all his ideas without suffering my own or those of any other author to interfere with them, or entering into any dispute on their utility. I said to myself, “I will begin by laying up a stock of ideas, true or false but clearly conceived, til my understanding shall be sufficiently furnished to enable me to compare and make choices of those are most estimable… Having passed some years in thinking after others, without reflection and almost without reasoning, I found myself possessed of sufficient materials to set about thinking on my own.”Visiting the place that Rousseau called the Charmettes it was easy to imagine him walking up the hill above the house among the rows of grapevines or below the house among the apple trees. Or to imagine the place where, under a tree, “Maman” carefully explained how she wanted their relationship to become sexual.It took Rousseau two weeks to get used to the notion of becoming Madame Warren’s sexual partner. And when the moment of consummation arrived Rousseau was very conflicted, In Confessions he wrote:“For the first time I saw myself in the arms of a woman, and a woman I adored. Was I happy? No, I tasted pleasure but I know not what invincible sadness poisoned its charms. I felt as if I committed incest. Two or three times pressing her with rapture in my arms, I flooded with tears.”Rousseau seemed to attempt to avoid his duties as Madame Warren’s lover. In Confessions he wrote:“With Maman my pleasure was always disturbed by a feeling of sadness, by a secret clenching of the heart that I could overcome only with difficulty, and instead of congratulating myself on possessing her, I reproached myself for defiling her.”Damrosch, his biographer, commented that by Madame Warren’s “offering herself so coolly she made him feel that he was degrading a madonna who should never have descended from her pedestal… He was trapped in an ambiguous situation that he longed to escape.”As you might imagine Madame Warren soon left him in Charmette, returned to Annecy and found a new, more enthusiastic lover.We toured the house and the grounds, seeing the apple orchard, the vineyards, the cherry tree, the valley view below, the beautiful well manicured geometric garden on the terrace next to the house with roses and purple sage, the house with many windows with stunning views and cozy fireplaces.Obviously servants tended the gardens, the orchards, vineyards, the house and cooked the food. Rousseau described his paradise this way:“I persuaded Mamma to live in the country. A lonely house on a valley slope was our place of refuge, and it was there that in the space of four or five years I enjoyed a century of life and a pure and complete happiness… I could not bear subjection, and I was perfectly free, or better than free because I was subject only to my own affections and did only what I wanted to do.”I imagined the 20 year old Rousseau happy, free and immersed in books that filled his still developing brain. In my mind I saw his gray matter soaking up information like a sponge building his own internal library, preparing for the moment years later when the muse compelled him to project his ideas into the world, ideas that would launch revolutions, stir romances, become the foundation of democratic constitutions and dictator dogma.We left Charmette to travel to Belvedere at Chattmont (some thirty plus kilometers away in rush hour traffic) to meet our landlords Claire and Jean Louis. Belvedere hosted Queen Victoria as a must see viewpoint overlooking Lake Bourget. Once there, after winding about lost and late, the almost 360° view stunned us with subtle muted colors and soft curving lines of mountains surrounding this second largest lake in France glowing in a setting sun. Words can’t describe what we saw there.Jean Louis told us a story about one of the mountains called the cat’s teeth. It seemed a fisherman couldn’t catch any fish in the lake. He prayed to God to show him that there were fish in the lake by allowing him to catch some fish, promising to throw them back. And catch fish he did, but he threw no fish back. A giant cat descended on the fisherman once he came to shore eating the fishermen and all of the fish.The cat terrified the kingdom and the king commissioned a brave knight to find the cat and kill him. The knight accomplished his purpose and threw the cat in the lake. The cat’s spirit rose up from the lake into the mountain where today one can see his teeth sticking up on a mountain at the North end of the lake. And sometimes a strong wind blows from the cat’s teeth to the north of the lake overturning boats on the lake and blowing roofs from buildings. This north wind is the revenge of the cat.The Beldvedere Restaurant served a meal as delicious as the view was spectacular. The highlight was Fois grois, an appetizer that Marietta and I shared. John and Rita had the same (meme chose). I had duck breast. Marietta had fish. We shared a rhubarb strawberry tart with rhubarb sorbet. I’m normally not fond of sorbet, but this sorbet delighted my mouth.Fortunately, I sat at the table with three French speaking people. John, who spoke fluent French, graciously translated most of what was said. Jean Louis and Claire have a daughter in New Zealand and they planned to sell their apartment so that they can travel more, mostly in the French speaking parts of the world and some to New Zealand. We discussed our visit to the Rousseau museum in Chambery. We talked about the notorious lover, poet, politician Lamartine. Jean Louis told us of the affinity of this region to Italy and the Italian history here. The former kings of Italy are buried just across the lake from us along with members of the family who are no longer nobility. Claire’s family has an Italian heritage. Jean Louis pointed out the canal to the Rhone River which sometimes floods the lake.We drove home satisfied from the views, the food and the conversation about Rousseau, Queen Victoria, Lamartine the poet/lover/politician, Lac du Bourget and the Italian influence still present in this area of Savoy. On the way home my thoughts returned to Rousseau. During his lifetime, he was reviled by French society and a warrant for his arrest remained in force for several years in France until his death. His personal behavior was demonic and repulsive. Today the French love him. They forgive the man his many sins and ignore the contradictions and paradoxes in his ideas. His name is plastered on buildings, streets, schools and universities all over France.The depth of his ideas, the simplicity and clarity of his writing style, the way his ideas connected both the old (acknowledging the existence of God) and the new proclaiming the equality of man and man’s innate goodness has captured the imagination of people for centuries.As powerful and revolutionary as his political ideas were, his ideas about psychology and the dynamics of human consciousness and development were even more revolutionary.Earlier I mentioned that Rousseau discovered many psychological concepts. He defined the unconscious without naming it. He wrote a play describing narcissism. He believed all of us had an exclusive core self that lies beneath our behavior, thus discovering the concept of personality. His book, Confessions, was an attempt to examine his personality before the term had ever been coined. Before Freud, Rousseau strived to understand his present in light of his past. He proposed that his nurture or childhood history created his character flaws. Cocteau suggested Rousseau was “the rising sun of Freud.” Rousseau, according to one of his biographers, locates our problems in our history rather than in defects of human nature itself.Long after Rousseau, Freud wrote, “Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself! Then you will understand why you were bound to fall ill and perhaps you will avoid falling ill in the future.” This was exactly the purpose of many of Rousseau’s books, especially Confessions.Rousseau also defined the defense of passive aggression when he said of himself near the end of his days, “His strength is not in action but in resistance.” In Confessions he describes his “resistance” or what psychologists would call passive aggressive behavior that took the form of minor thievery and slipshod work in his early life and his constant avoidance of his friends and of those who wanted to promote and help him. In Confessions he describes himself as using alternating strategies of what we would call exhibitionism, followed by what we would term masochism. He always needed to construct circumstances in which he was pushed or forced into doing something so that it wasn’t really his fault.Though he believed we are shaped by events, he also believed we are born with our own unique self.Centuries before narrative therapy suggested that our personal assignment in life was to hold on to our authentic nature and protect our souls from the attacks from culture, the media and society, Rousseau made this same prescription.The fact that it appears Freud and others stole their ideas form Rousseau or unconsciously borrowed them fascinates me and, to me, confirms Rousseau’s notion that there is some order or natural synchronicity that surrounds us.What most interests me is what Rousseau had to say about the nature/nurture debate. Here Rousseau is on both sides of the argument and he resolves the argument much like modern psychologists do by implying what most of us now believe that, of course, both nature and nurture form who we are.I would like to reopen this debate using Rousseau, his life and his attempts to understand himself. I know that of course nature and nurture work together in our development and that we can never tease apart the elements that make us who we are.However, we therapists often offer one of these two myths of the origins of our personality and our behavior with our clients/patients as we try to help them understand themselves.  I call these two ways of explaining who we are to ourselves, myths, because that is what they are. As I wrote earlier, we can never tease the two apart. The most commonly used myth in psychotherapy is the nurture myth.Our goal as therapists is to help people change and that can’t be accomplished until they feel safe. The purpose of using either of these myths in therapy is to bring comfort and compassion to our patients/clients. Once they are comfortable with their self-definition and feel they understand themselves and why they react and behave as they do, they can then plot a path toward growth and self-improvement. Until they have become at peace with their understanding of who they are and can be self-aware enough to connect their self understanding with an approximate version of reality, they cannot successfully change to become a better version of themselves and they will remain lost, confused and misguided.Both myths have the same therapeutic purpose, to bring compassionate self-awareness and self-understanding. Both myths when used alone are bound to miss the mark to some extent. But a perfectly accurate picture of our origins is not possible for us and is not the goal of therapy. The goal is to create enough of a solid sense of self that clients/patients can begin to do the work of changing what they can and helping others find effective ways to relate to them with their current givens.So either myth can work fine for the purpose of the therapist. Of course, I use the client’s past sometimes to understand their present. I think, though, that I more often use their genetic heritage as my template to help people understand themselves.Rousseau made an heroic effort at trying to accurately reconstruct his past to understand and explain himself to himself and others. He was brutally honest with himself and his search for his authentic self was perhaps as earnest a search as one can make.For example he confesses his masochism saying, “I was only too happy to be beaten.” Earlier I described his sexual ambivalence and fear of being an aggressive potent sexual partner which he courageously exposed. He stated that “he loved to be at the feet of an imperious mistress…to obey her orders, to have to beg her pardon, have been for me the sweetest of delights.” And even more revealing, “I had an affection for acts of submission, confusing the posture of a suppliant lover with that of a penitent schoolboy.”He gave this clear, accurate and honest self-description of himself as a boy: “I was a base child abandoned by fate, destined perhaps to perish in a mire, a conceited runt whose farcical pride mingled childhood with romance in a ridiculous way.”Even with his best intentions however, his biographers have found many errors in fact in the stories he told. The distortions in his memory always seemed to work in his favor and clearly defended a better version of reality than what actually occurred.His narrative uses the past to excuse or explain his significant sins. Some of them were: the abandonment of his five children with Theresa (his primary sin); that he lived with Theresa as man and wife for 33 years, yet never married her and lied  about that; created persecution fantasies that cost him every friendship he ever had; lied about religious conversions back and forth between Lutheranism and Catholicism; was sexually inadequate and often failed his lovers; his obdurate self destructive behavior; his paranoia that maintained a constant persistent persecution complex for the last half of his life and more.His explanation makes sense that his sins were a product of: being a motherless child, abandoned by an at best neglectful father at ten, abused or neglected or misunderstood by parental figures, apprenticed to a mean master engraver, forced to run away from this harsh master at age 16, alone and abandoned forced to renounce his faith in favor of Catholicism, falls in love with his mentor mother figure who screws him, then she abandons him in favor of a better lover; he becomes an itinerant music teacher or secretary with one ungrateful employer after another.This history explains his behavior once he is an adult at thirty and begins to develop his talent as a writer.His book Confessions is perhaps the best analysis anyone has ever written or conducted on themselves. And where did it get Rousseau. He died friendless and paranoid. In his mind, he always had an enemy that he blamed for his downfall. This thinking pattern only worsened as he wrote Confessions. His analysis and self-awareness had little or no impact on his personality or behavior.I would suggest to Rousseau, if I could, that he use the nature template to understand himself and his troubles. He comes from a long line of people who have little or no interest in nurturing children, beginning (as far as we know) with his grandfather David Rousseau who showed little interest in his son Isaac or his grandchildren, his older brother Francois and Jean-Jacques. In that time and in previous generations it was common for fathers to abandon mothers and children. Isaac left after François was born to go to Constantinople and didn’t return until his wife inherited money. Jean-Jacques’s uncles did the same with their families. Perhaps Jean-Jacques never inherited the gene to nurture children.Then there is his stubborn rebellious, passive aggressive nature. His family came from Huguenots, seeking refuge in Switzerland from religious persecution. His grandfather was censured for supporting democratic reform in Geneva. His father was literally run out of town for fighting with a man of higher station.Perhaps Jean-Jacques came by his stubborn rebellious somewhat idealist self-destructive nature honestly through his genetic heritage.Once Jean-Jacques was ten, he followed Francois, his older brother’s pattern of dishonesty and petty thievery. His father stole his children’s inheritance form their mother.He was short-sighted and this contributed to his lack of coordination and his less direct more passive approach to aggression and his interest in reading. Certainly this was genetic.Most of us believe that one’s sexual identity is genetic. This could be true for Rousseau’s masochistic sexual interests. He had some physical problem that made it difficult for him to contain his urine. This could be genetic and too could have given him sexual performance anxieties. This may be the reason he was sexually comfortable only with Theresa, his social inferior, who was a social embarrassment to him and who was too far beneath him socially for him to want to marry.His father and his mother and his grandfather loved ideas, books, and politics. Perhaps this is the genetic base of his political genius.What if Jean-Jacques looked at himself by remembering back in time through his genetic heritage to discover that he inherited a significant tendency to feel paranoid, persecuted and to always have a current persecutor. What if he understood his passivity to come in part from his inherited short-sightedness. What if he saw that he and his brother had the same genetic developmental path as their often-in-trouble-as-children-and-teenagers parents (his mother in Geneva went to forbidden plays in disguise and received public reproach).Clearly Jean-Jacques used the nurture myth as an excuse and justification for who he was and why he could not change.If he had subscribed to the nature or genetic myth, he might have done the same.So why do I think the nature myth might have been a better choice? And since it really doesn’t matter which myth we use to explain the past, because the work in the present and the future is the same, why would one be a better choice than the other? If we get to some relatively accurate version of self-awareness and self-understanding, we learn that the best and worst parts of ourselves are the same, regardless of which myth gets us there. So why does it matter? This is my answer:The nurture myth seems to me to be easier to distort. Our memories tend to retell past events in our favor. We can use a story to place blame on someone else and to continue our personal pity party and our sense of victimhood and persecution. The morass of our personal distorted stories can leave us confused and lost. It can take years to piece together a sensible personal narrative, while our genes are starring us in the face when we look at our family. They are hard to miss.I meet with colleagues in a consultation group once a month. When I got back it was my turn to present. I shared with them my reflections about Rousseau. One of my colleagues told this story:“I had a client who committed suicide last week. He was a 15 year old brilliant, creative, artistic, depressed teenager. He is diabetic and six months ago he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself by overdosing on insulin and that didn’t work. This time he used a gun and it did. I didn’t see this coming. His psychiatrist had some concerns but this surprised him too.“I went to the funeral wondering what I should have done that I didn’t do. I can only imagine his mother’s self-recriminations.“The nurture myth pulls for blame to moments like this and I don’t believe anyone was to blame. I think his mother was right when she said, ‘he was not of this world. He felt everything so deeply.’ To me that meant that he was born with very thin skin. His mother, his father, his psychiatrist nor me were to blame for that and searching for blame here would be just more hurtful and not helpful.The nature myth avoids such useless blaming in addition to that and to helping us more quickly see ourselves, the nature myth levels us with others. It connects us to the whole of humanity and the history of our species. Natural selection needs variety in order to help our species evolve. Our species needs different types and talents to play different roles. We all share genes with our ancestors, genes that challenge us emotionally and characterologically. The genes that burden us now burdened our forebears too. We can look at their stories and see how they fought their alcoholic or addictive gene; how they struggled with their temper. We can see that we are not alone in this struggle of fighting our demons. Someone or ones who came before us had a similar battle. We can learn from them. We can try things they never did.The nature myth levels us because all of us have our version of the same genetic struggle. We have different battles with different demons, but we can be sure that the person across the street has some struggle with themselves that they inherited too. For all of us, when we come to know who we are from our genes, our best self is our worst self and the reverse is true, where our unique histories can allow us to believe we are isolated from people because they can never understand us.We are not independent unique beings that cannot be understood. We share the human condition of being blessed and cursed at the same time with some character trait we inherited. Perhaps you can help me with mine and perhaps I can help you with yours. The least we can do is show compassion for each other once we name and claim our inherited struggles as now belonging to us. We are all part of the same human tapestry that goes back centuries and will hopefully go forward for more. And with the nature model we are not to blame for the genes we pass on and we can hope and pray that our progeny do a better job than we did using and coping with their genetic heritage.It is in this spirit that I love and understand Rousseau. As best he could, he named and claimed who he was. I love him for that. I can forgive him more easily because of this. I am sorry no one helped him grow and change with his insight, but then there was no clear role for such a helper in his world.There is now and I hope we therapists can accomplish the first part of the therapeutic task, facilitating self-awareness, along with the second, the part that Jean-Jacques never got to, growing and changing.Thank you Jean-Jacques for your courageous attempt at self-awareness. Annecy as a ChoiceWe didn’t know anything about Annecy, France, never heard of it til Rita and John invited us to take a trip with them there. By car it’s six hours from Paris, a beautiful drive once you get out of Paris. As you approach the Alps the hills begin to roll. The valleys deepen. And then we turned the corner once in the city and saw the lake. It extends 20 plus kilometers. Annecy sits at the south end of the linear lake about three kilometers wide. A park covered the south tip with paths and canals forming water spokes from the south tip. Just west of that tip is the ancient city with old buildings, churches and arch-supported porticos.The many views of the lake stunned us. The city offered many restaurants, many specializing in fondue and raclette. Raclette is a heated slab of cheese scrapped on a plate and then slathered on bread or potatoes. Others served traditional French fare, steak and fries, duck, trout, rabbit, chicken, fois gras, French bread and various  deserts, chocolate cake and mousse, crème brulee or fresh berries and glacier (ice cream). Many offered outside seating under shade.Tuesday and Saturday farmers’ held street markets with vegetables, cheese and fresh fruit, bakers (boulangers) and butchers (boucher) with displays of rabbit and chicken and ducks with their heads and necks attached. Something about the meats shouted fresh and delicious. The vegetable display colored the tables with purples, greens, oranges, reds and yellows. The bakery displays were works of art with fruit tarts, in reds, yellows and blues from berries to fruits and the warm tan browns of flaky croissants and baguettes.And the antique market filled the old cobblestoned streets with booths full of chotskies of all sorts, old books, leather furniture, old jewelry, clocks, lamps, guns, medieval soldier armor, fabrics (especially silk), hand carved walking sticks, vintage clothing, old watches, paintings, silverware and china.The two activities that were especially available at Annecy were biking and parasailing. People in Annecy biked on all the streets. The city fathers provided a specially designated path for bikes beside the west part of the lake. On the east side bikes shared the road with cars in some places. A 40 kilometer trip around the lake is doable with only a little bit of fear from cars on the west side. Thousands of bikes traveled this path every day, some racing at high speeds in pelotons and others pedaling slowly, enjoying the flowers, fields, homes, cattle, horses, and views of the lake. Unicycles, recumbent bicycles, two person bikes, small wheel multi-geared bikes, bikes with saddles, others with baskets riding past rock climbers through a tunnel, past small towns, churches and museums, serviced by restaurants, ice cream shops and bike rental stores.People road bikes (velos) for transportation, exercise, adrenalin from speed, to see sights, people from eighty to infants were on the road. May was early in the season and bike shops were already renting all of their bikes by noon on Saturdays.The brisk air, usually around 65° was perfect for bicycling, a tailwind leaving going north and a headwind coming home. The clouds shifted constantly moving the light and giving riders different perspectives of the mountains around lake, some with snow covered peaks. The pollen from vegetation sometimes blew around like snow.Boats provided points of interest for the bikers and the bikers did the same for people in boats. I pedaled the east side six times and the west once. I saw something new each time. The Plan trees captivated me, some trimmed into nubs and some stretching high above the road. Manicured lawns sat next to the plowed fields. Whenever your legs called for a break, there was a place to stop and have ice cream, coffee, coke, tea or a tart.Traveling north the parasailers fell out of the sky with chutes of all colors looking like floating psychedelic half mushrooms in the air. If there is a better place in the world to parasail, I don’t know it, from the top, bottom, east and west sides of the lake people jumped off mountains, expertly guiding their chutes to a specific target, floating in the air on a good day for twenty minutes. Some instructors carried a passenger along for the ride. Some parasailers aimed for a yellow air-filled square about 8 meters x 8 meters floating in the lake. They often missed and got wet. In that event a motor boat quickly came to pull the parasailers out of the cold water. Some sailors wore wetsuits in case they missed the mark.One weekend day we saw parasails coming down in waves of fifty in the air at one time. We also saw gliders pulled into the mountain updrafts by a plane and hang-gliders sailing off the mountains next to the parasailers.The control these parasailers had over their chutes astounded me. They seemed to execute their flights with great precision. They twirled to lose altitude quickly and to control their distance so they did not overfly their landing area. Some flew over the lake and landed just on the shore. Others flew to fields beyond the lake’s edges.I mentioned boats earlier. Sailboats, ski boats for rent, excursion boats of all sizes, leg paddle boats, large dinner boats and cruise taxis, sculls and kayaks moved about on the lake’s surface. The snow fed water was well below 60° F.One day while we picnicked by the lake after biking 17 kilometers to its end, we sat and watched a young woman with a towel, an oval topped float that looked like a grave stone, and carrying swim flippers walk to the lakes edge. She wrapped herself in the towel. With the towel as her cover she changed into her bikini, walked into the lake, put on her flippers, held the float in her arms and swam backwards into the lake to a buoy about 500 meters from shore and back in about 30 minutes. Once on shore, she wrapped herself again in her towel, changed back into her clothes and left, never getting her hair wet.We sat and marveled that she could endure the cold water, while most others who swam in the lake wore wetsuits.The weather created a different beautiful scene every day in Annecy. Some days we woke to cloud shrouded mountains with cloud fingers crawling down the mountain crevices toward the lake. Other days azure blue skies dotted with cotton balls floating high above the snow peaked mountains created a clear crisp scene. Even on rainy days, a walk along the lake front was a pleasure.Where could we have found a more interesting place for people like us who loved to do things, to move, hike, bike and eat? Traveling with Rita and JohnWe especially enjoyed being travel companions of Rita and John. They are both more organized than we are, especially Rita who is very good with details. John’s best thing is patience and forbearance. We had much to learn from them. John’s modeling taught me patience and Rita’s careful thorough planning taught Marietta to be more careful of her belongings.I navigated for John sparing Rita and John many fights about direction with the help of the GPS voice of Heather. Marietta and Rita shopped in the Marche, cooked and laughed together.John was a constant resource, helper, tender, chauffer. Once Rita wasn’t paying attention while bike riding. I was riding just behind and saw her bike veer into the hedge. She scratched her arm and leg a bit. I sat on my bike offering no help as Rita recovered. John swept in from behind, got off his bike to be sure Rita was okay.This eager kind compassion and concern is a hallmark of John.I think John and I gave one another some masculine comfort when we were overwhelmed by our wives desire to go and see the next thing.Rita gave Marietta a shopping companion, thus giving my permission to sit on our balcony, enjoy the view and write while they roamed the stores and marches.We shared our foibles and fears, our stories and dreams. Our friendship deepened because of this shared experience. Our Last NightRemember the Sound of Music Mansion John and I found. It is an inn/restaurant, Chateau Avenierres. We made reservations there for 7:30 dinner. John, Rita and Marietta arrived impeccably dressed, Marietta and Rita in fine evening attire, complete with jewelry and heels and John in slacks, a dress shirt and a sport coat.Then there was me in my cotton wrinkled mountain climbing pants with six pockets and zippers at the knees so that the pants could be converted into shorts and a wrinkled blue short sleeved shirt (my best shirt).Upon arrival we walked the beautiful grounds and gardens, absorbing the air and the view of blue skies, mountains and Annecy and the lake below. These views after a time were like wasting good wine on a palate numbed with alcohol. They became backdrop that pulled us into a trance in which we took the beauty for granted.The presentation of the three courses was as spectacular as the views. Rita took pictures. I can’t describe the plates and the food adequately. The desert course was the most amazing. It was a delicate work of art that made us feel as if we were violating something by eating it. But eat it we did.Marietta did not like my other short reflection about turning 68. She found it depressing. So she wanted me to write another version. I read it that night at the table: Reflections on 68What are the advantages of age? Certainly not a strong back or a raging sex life. But there are some. One is poise and judgment. Our tongues have strong calluses now and when we bite it to spare others our criticisms, it doesn’t hurt as much. We understand how others might feel hurt, because we have felt the same. We are kinder, gentler and more accommodating without our youthful swagger. Our temper has calmed and we don’t react quite as quickly as we once did. We see clearer how things work and why the rules are what they are. We are spared the eager impulse of youth to test limits and push envelopes.Perhaps the best part of 68 is the discovery that we don’t need to please others so much. We can drive a ten year old convertible if we choose. We can jump from a mountaintop and sail to the earth or leave work and fly to Annecy France with good friends, drink wine at lunch, eat croissants with butter for breakfast, learn French words we will rarely use, study Rousseau for no good reason, write books that we dream of publishing but know never will be. This is 68. There’s freedom here. Thank you for welcoming me to this time. We rode down the mountain back to Annecy, full, satiated, quiet, tired and ready to start our journey home, all of us lost in our thoughts about what awaited us when we got home.The ride back to Paris and our hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport had its challenges. The car rode and drove great, very quiet and plenty of leg room (unless we had luggage). The small trunk required Marietta and Rita to ride with bags between them below them and behind them going and returning. The going wasn’t so bad for them. On our return it seems that our bags had grown. Marietta and Rita were crushed in the back seat by bags. My front seat was as far forward as it could go.John accommodated us by stopping twice on the six hour trip back, once for lunch and other time just to get the circulation going again in our legs.Once we found our Navotel Hotel at the airport, John and I took the car back to Hertz. It took us a couple of spins around the airport to find a gas station nearby, a fifteen minute walk to the hotel shuttle bus station and a thirty minute wait for the shuttle bus back to the hotel.Once back at the hotel, we had just enough time to shower and dress so we could share a cab into town where John and Rita were to meet John’s niece and new boyfriend for dinner and we were to meet Isabelle. Christian couldn’t come because of a work dinner that evening. (You would remember Isabelle from entries of previous trips. She is a friend who came to Nashville accompanying her doctor husband, Christian, on his fellowship in Cardiology at Vanderbilt. Isabelle is a psychologist and I introduced her to my colleagues and she observed some of my therapy sessions through a one-way mirror. We would eat lunch afterwards and she would share her thoughts with me about the session. We became good friends and have visited her and Christian in France and they have come to Utah to visit us.)Isabelle spent her week moving at her work to a new office. She was up until 1:00 A.M. the night before. Though I’m sure she was exhausted, she looked great and had her usual enthusiastic smiling disposition and interest in us and our trip.She told us that a drug company in Boston wanted to hire Christian away from his hospital and his medical school appointment. They made a substantial offer, but Christian likes his independence and he is too dedicated to public service and to medical education to leave his position for more money.Thomas is still in his residency. He has one child, a son and one on the way.  His doctor wife wants to reduce her workload. Thomas can’t, but has moved so that they are closer to her work. Charlotte’s husband, Arnaud, still has not found a new job. Charlotte has changed jobs and is doing well. Her commute has changed from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. The children don’t come so often to Isabelle and Christian’s Fountanebleu second weekend home because Thomas is often on call and Charlotte and Arnaud enjoy entertaining friends at their home in their backyard. (Yards are a treasure for people who live and work in Paris.)Isabelle is still working on her article about treating HIV positive children in France that I helped her with last year. She has received new help in the methods section from our shared friend Lynn Walker. She has a new patient population in addition to HIV patients, Hepatitis C patients who also suffer with a serious chronic condition. She can imagine retirement but she still enjoys her work.We were happy to see her and wished she and Christian would come and visit us again.Isabelle left. We rejoined John and Rita and caught a cab back to the airport hotel.The next day we were on a plane for home. ConclusionAs you may remember from the introduction of this journal entry for this trip to Annecy, there are three parts of my quest to Annecy. One deals with aging and death. A second has to do with understanding Rousseau and having an imaginary conversation with him about the nature/nurture myths. The third involves my constant challenge to myself to be a better husband and companion to Marietta.I will first discuss what I learned about aging. I was heartened that my back found a path toward recovery on this trip. Every time it goes out on me, I am afraid I cannot recover and my existence will be trapped in constant pain and chronic weakness and fragility.It turns out, that for now I still have the ability to bounce back. That was a relief. As I rode my bike in Annecy, I could feel the spot in what physical therapists call the IT band. It runs from the base of the spine through the waist and on the outside of my thighs between the hamstring and the quadriceps. Pedaling helped me understand how I injured my back. When I pressed hard on the pedal, the spot just above my hip joint began to hurt. What must’ve happened when I injured my back was that I ignored that signal on that fateful morning and the pressure on that muscle caused a muscle to spasm in that spot and the inflammation spread into my whole back.I saw how I could shift gears and take the pressure from that spot as I pedaled. On my riding once back home, I have done just that and I have become very aware of the signals I’m getting from that spot and I hope I’ve learned what I can do differently. I am very encouraged that I can continue actively riding my bike.As to aging and dying one day, yes I think about that as you can tell by my two pieces reflecting on turning 68. But my two fainting spells, the one in Connecticut and the other in Paris our first night, gave me an experience of what losing consciousness might be like at the point of death. I was completely at peace in these fainting spells. My world shrank to a tiny space of current time. I had no concern about the past or the future. I floated in a warm, tender present and I was very content. If this is death so be it.The road to the end still frightens me, but the end doesn’t so much. At 68 I am aware of the preciousness of each bike ride, each sentence written and each hug given and received.To my second quest, reading Rousseau’s biography and seeing some of the spaces he inhabited, imagining him in his world and wondering what it must’ve been like to be his friend and learning from these reflections as I debate with myself and try to find a position in the debates about the nature/nurture myths that are often used by me and my therapist colleagues.I learned that insight for Rousseau produced no life changes. He died a tormented man and lived a life of fear, filled with some real but mostly imaginary enemies. His brilliance gave him no pleasure. His thirty year intimate relationship gave him little comfort. Though he understood himself better than most people ever do and he had valuable insights into himself that therapists only hope to give their clients, he could not find a way to reality and personal peace.I concluded that he used his self-analysis to excuse his conduct and his craziness. He shifted the blame for his behavior onto his history and avoided the challenge of learning and growing. He used his torment to illicit compassion and understanding from others, but he never received or accepted a challenge to become a better man and find accountability growth, change and peace.Rousseau taught me that the nurture myth too often creates excuses and too often helps us avoid the challenge to grow and expand our soul and character.He went half way in my opinion on the journey to personal growth. His life proves to me that insight and personal awareness is only half of the work. The other is to change. He avoided that step by blaming his past.Now to the third leg of my quest, to be a better person and husband. At first on my return, I was discouraged. I had so many moments where my fear and anger overwhelmed me on this trip. I reflected on these episodes alone, not aware of how Marietta experienced my behavior, but painfully aware of the ridiculous self-imposed misery and terror I felt on this trip.In my not so distant past I would not have been aware of my failure to see reality as it was. I would have justified my fears and transformed them into attacks on Marietta.After a few days home I knew I had apologies to make. There was the time in the Nashville airport when Marietta stayed at the ticket counter and didn’t come with me to the security line and I was frightened, then furious; the time when she left me to get her food, my bag, my food and drinks alone with my hurt back; the time I looked at the sign at the gate that said our plane was delayed an hour and Marietta wasn’t there, the time on the way back when she left the security line with our passports in Philadelphia to check on the gate when the tickets I held had the gate printed on them.At these moments fear overwhelmed me. I could feel it. I knew it and I saw that it was the engine for the rage I felt. I knew my fears were foolish but I could do little to calm myself and I needed an unreasonable amount of hand holding and control.I asked her about these times, prepared to apologize and confess how hopeless I felt about changing the part of myself inherited from my father. She told me that I had not expressed anger at her in any of those times and that I had not attacked her. I did, however, get unreasonably mad at her for bringing food from France in her large purse which forced us through another security line with all our bags.Yes, I was angry about that. I was afraid this would give security guards the opportunity to take themselves very seriously and target us for a forty-five minute unpacking, repacking search that would make us miss our flight home.My fears were silly as usual and it took five minutes at most. After reminding me of this episode, we talked about how we could have improved on that experience. Both of us felt better and believed that we knew how to deal with this differently next time.As I reflected on the last part of this journey, I had one other experience that created a difficult challenge for me. My friend and colleague, Jerome Burt, came over for dinner. He asked us about our trip. He was aware of a party I was hosting to which he was invited with several colleagues. The purpose of the party is to invite them to join me in founding a literary journal titled, Southern Psychotherapy.He wanted to offer some advice about how to make this event successful. He knows firsthand about my social clumsiness and he hears from others how they experience me. He is a valuable source of information and a good friend. He has often challenged and advised me and I do everything I can to take his advice.This is one of the reasons what he said to me felt so bad. He began speaking as if he were me to illustrate how poorly what he considered to be one of my standard phrases plays with others.“I’m a narcissist. It’s in my genes. I know it and I can’t change. You have to accept me this way,” he said as if these were my often spoke words.I recognized the first two sentences. They are mine. I have often said, “I’m a narcissist and I get that from my father.”I will discuss the second half of his quote that he thinks comes from me later.As to the first half, I think I get why that plays so poorly. I intend to say it as a confession of sin, something I’ve come to know about myself and something I want my friends to know and to also know that I want them to challenge me when my tendency to be self absorbed ignores their needs or hogs the stage. That can happen and I don’t want to do that.The good parts of my narcissism I want to hold on to: my enthusiasm, my drive, my wish to contribute, my creativity, my initiative, my clarity and sense of purpose. I can see that Jerome is warning me that this confession of sin has two problems. It can be an extension of my narcissism. I am still the focus. And two it is naive of me to think that other people will take my confession the way it’s intended.I was the baby boy, an ADD kid who made messes and charmed people so that many in my family loved me in spite of my foibles. I want people to know and love me and somehow I expect that when they do know me, they will also love me.Jerome is telling me this is not necessarily so and I should stop showing my belly so publicly. Many people just aren’t that interested and feel that it is too much information and others will use my vulnerability against me.I get that and I think he is right. I will be more circumspect in social settings in the future and less self-disclosing about my character flaws. (Rousseau made the same mistake).Now to the second half of what Jerome said the part that seems off the mark to me.It is true that I say to people, “I’m a narcissist and I can’t and won’t change. So there.”? I can’t see myself. I do know that I would never intentionally communicate this. But you the reader can tell. Yes, writing a journal about one’s silly three week trip to France and expecting anyone to find it interesting does make the case that I wallow a bit too much in my own importance. But am I working on changing? In my heart of hearts I believe I am and that changing and getting better is what I have devoted my life to. As a boy I wanted to improve so I could be as good as my brothers. As a teenager and young man I wanted to be a better man so that a woman would love me. I wanted to be a better baseball, basketball, tennis, football player and a better golfer. I have strived to be healthier and stronger. I have used the pain of two failed marriages to strive to be a better husband.I work hard at being a better therapist. Change is what I help people do. And that is what I constantly challenge myself to do.And Jerome doesn’t know this about me? My friend Jerome who knows me better than most anyone other than Marietta to whose words I pay careful attention. How could he say that? If anyone should know this, I expect Jerome would and he doesn’t?God, I hope he is wrong.I think perhaps he is right that my confession of sin is too public and too self-focused. When Jerome saw how hurt I was by what he said, he apologized. He acknowledge that I do work on changing and perhaps I don’t say the words he used, but sometimes people interpret my confessions, its tone and manner as a declaration of how I am and that people have to accept me as I am because I’m not going to change. It’s genetic. I can see how that might be true. No one should be defenseless against a self-declared, entitled, unrepentant narcissist.But I do still want to tell those I care about that I am aware of my worst self and that they can challenge me when they see my horns growing. I do intend to confess my sin. I want them to know I need help and that I am working on being a better person.This is what I think I’m doing, when I tell people I’m a narcissist. I have never heard myself say what Jerome quoted me as saying. I asked Marietta if this were true and she said that is was not; that I don’t say I won’t change.In fact, she said she sees how hard I work and she appreciates my efforts to become a better man and a better husband.As painful as this was to hear Jerome (a person I trust to get me and understand me), say this about me, it was helpful to have Marietta affirm that she saw my hard work to change. She understood my life task and she saw and felt my progress in our relationship. That means more than I can say or write. If my trip gave me this gift from Marietta and only this, it was fantastic. THE END

China

The curmudgeon is off again, this time to China for a two week tour. My usual provocateur, Marietta, seems about as apprehensive as I am. “There are so many people there,” she says again and again. “I’m afraid of being swallowed alive in a world where I can’t read a street sign.”“Treat the trip like a school outing,” I replied. “Imagine a rope connecting you and me and John and Rita and hold onto me as if I were the rope and I will hold on to John and we will follow Rita.”Oh sorry, I didn’t mention that we are fellow travelers with John and Rita Lindell. They traveled with us May of 2013 to Annecy, France for three weeks. (See my report of that trip and our education about Jean Jacques Rousseau).On each of my foreign trips (you might remember from reading my previous travel essays) I create a quest or pilgrimage and I go in search of some sort of spiritual Holy Grail. This trip is no different.My pilgrimage to China is to learn more about the mystical, magical side of myself and of humans in general. I am a modernist thinker. I believe in science, facts and logic. I generally oppose superstition and magical thinking in favor or empirical data.Yet, I am a theist. My version of theism is a form of Jeffersonian deist Christianity. I believe that there is a spiritual force that I don’t understand; that is a mystery to me that connects all things. I can’t believe it is an accident that life evolved on earth, where light, air, and water merged into life and moving creatures, who are all interdependent on one another.At the same time I believe in the spirit, I also live my life as if I can understand people, animals and the world around me through logic and science.I often feel bifurcated into two minds believing one thing and its opposite at the same time. Somehow, I’m confident both are true, that I can understand reality through science and logic and yet I can never understand the, to me, mystical magical forces that are at work in the spirit of the universe.My first impressions of China and its ancient culture are that its whole way of understanding how life operates is based on magic, luck and mystical forces that are beyond human comprehension. The more I read about China, old China of the various dynasties following Confucianism and modern China of Wen Jaibao, it seems China also is of two minds, the agnostic modern communist mind that tolerates no mystical or superstitious thought and Old Chinese Confucianism that believes primarily in using the forces of randomness and superstition and mystical forces to understand life.As I read After the Bitter Comes the Sweet: How One Woman Weathered the Storms of China's Recent History, No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism, The Man Who Stayed Behind and Huston Smith’s chapter on Confucianism, I am more convinced that the Chinese today still follow basic Confucian principles of believing the world is governed by spiritual forces and that the most successful among us follow the magic spiritual ideals of order, balance, compassion, and respect. Those who do are blessed by the gods and their ancestors. I wonder if the Chinese’s China appropriate superstition and tradition in the daily lives of their people more than most Eastern cultures.This, then, is my quest, to understand and appreciate superstition and faith as a way to live and understand life. I am going to China to learn how it makes sense to believe in magic and nurture mystery as a way of life.Carl Jung, my first mentor in appreciating this way of approaching existence wrote the introduction to the Wilhelm version of the I-Ching. In it he suggests that Western thinkers, like me, need to have our perspective shaken. We become too certain and too confident that we know what to expect of life and how things work when we can’t possibly understand it. The Chinese believe in being students of chaos or randomness. They believe that God or the Heavens speak through randomness and “accidental” metaphors or omens.The I-Ching is a book designed as an oracle using randomness as a way to access practical spiritual wisdom. There is no reason that the I-Ching works to answer our personal painful questions, yet there is no reason to believe that it may not work.Most of us approach life’s challenges with preconceived ideas. Using the I-Ching as an oracle opens the door for us to doubt our preconceptions and it gives us the opportunity to look at our lives and our problems in ways that we could never access through logical inquiry. Having multiple perspectives to understand and explain reality and direct our actions, transforms our inquiry from an ego-driven, acquisitive, consummatory quest into an inquiry that incorporates mysticism and spiritual values.Such superstitious, random research into our personal, spiritual and inner life adds a richness to our deliberations and expands our thinking beyond the confines of our ego-driven, self-serving logic. Jung commends this spiritual chaos to us as a way to free us from our ration selves and open us to the mystical natural forces that rule the universe.Though Jung’s invitation terrifies me, I see our trip to China as an opportunity to observe a culture that uses mysticism as a way to live and act in the world. The object of my travel quest seemed to reveal itself each summer either on our trip to our Deer Valley Condo or while I’m there for six weeks. Marietta and I load our VW Jetta until the chassis rests on the frame, with a space in the backseat reserved for Greta, our dog. This time we set out on Friday, June 26^th, 2015, for our first destination, Dallas, Texas, as guests of my cousin Jerry and his wife Sheralon with a stopover in Little Rock for lunch with my cousin Elisa and her husband Ashley and a mid-afternoon stop in Washington, Arkansas to visit my dear, sick friend, Robert. That was the plan but I had no idea what was to be in store for us on this trip.In Little Rock Elisa told me about her nephews, my cousins, who were suddenly cast adrift on the planet. These are two close brothers, one had been a successful practicing dentist, the other had been progressing well in a doctoral course of study in English at Old Miss. I’ll call the dentist Tom and the grad student Paul. At the end of his program Paul became caught in the cross-fire between two of his advising professors and had to leave the program. So, he went to Arizona where he began to help his brother, Tom, build a dentistry empire. Tom’s health failed. He could not practice dentistry because he could not stand on his feet. Tom luckily had professional insurance policy that would, if necessary, support him comfortably for the rest of his life, as long as his health prevented him from practicing his profession.The two brothers left Arizona for Denver, Colorado.Once in Denver somehow Fate/coincidence or the Devil brought them to a certain bar or restaurant (I’m not sure which) where they met a fellow, I’ll call Peter, about five years older than they. He was a trust-fund child of considerable wealth living in an 8,000 square foot home in the hills above Boulder, Colorado. He was seriously depressed. His mistress had recently committed suicide, jumping off a bridge and he, his wife and children needed to get away from her memory, so they were headed to their home in Bali.As Tom and Paul sat at the bar and talked with Peter, they discovered that they knew someone in common and that was my cousin and their cousin James. James and Peter were best friends in college. James played lead guitar in Peter’s band. Since college James worked hard becoming a successful wealthy entrepreneur and Peter went on to try to write a rock opera and establish himself as new age guru.Peter, it seems, immediately took Paul and Tom under his tutelage, offering them the option to live in his home in the foothills of the Rockies, while he and his family start life again in Bali.I couldn’t come to grips with this set of events, this story, this bizarre synchronicity of Fate and the universe. Was it a cruel joke that God was playing on Paul and Tom, as they proceeded on their journey into their wilderness? Was it a gift? What would they learn? Would they get lost in this good fortune and a haze of marijuana smoke, as I feared? Or would they discover the secret of the universe? Or would their retreat into the decadent wilderness teach them great wisdom? Or would they become Peter Pan’s lost boys?I have and had no idea what to make of this story, except to observe Fate at work. When we left Little Rock, I was preoccupied by my cousins’ bizarre turn of events that I had just been told. We drove on to Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where I grew up and my family is buried. We stopped at the cemetery and found the head stones of my Mother, Father, my two brothers and my sister. This visit to their graves felt profound and heavy to me, but I wasn’t sure why or what I was supposed to think and feel. I thought about China and how the Chinese worship their ancestors. I remembered the way I often use images of my family. I talk often to my dead mother. I watch her looking down at me, sometimes disapproving and sometimes amazed at what her ADD lazy, lovable, good-hearted but no-count son, David, had become.I often hear my father cough just before he proceeds with his next lecture. But mostly, when I commune with my father, I feel regretful. I regret that I let my contest with him for my mother’s love get in the way of our relationship. I regret that I could not soften his high level of fear and anxiety that quickly and easily transformed into anger. I knew how kind and generous he could be. I also knew that his anger hid his sweet spirit. I wish I could have healed him, like I heal many people like him, whom I see today in my practice. I see myself in him and know how trapped he must have felt by his defensive armor and his character flaws.I’m angry at my mother for being such a self-contained paragon. I’m very angry at the times my mother lived in, the Great Depression and its aftermath, that kept her captive in her difficult marriage and did not allow her poise, brilliance and talent to have a chance to be in the game and let her swing, even at one pitch. She would have hit several homeruns had she the chance.I cry when I think of how much I adored and worshipped my five year older brother Bill, who died when he was nineteen, Bill, who protected me from my angry father; who fed my narcissism, who loved me and believed in me and who left me defenseless to deal with my hurt, sad, wounded and resentful brother, Toney and my angry father.I wince when I think of my brother, Toney. Even today, after he has been dead for some years, the thought of him frightens me. He didn’t like me. I was an ADD mess. He was not. I was transparent. He was hidden. I craved attention and got it. He sulked in my wake and fed my detractors with stories of my outrageous behavior.When Bill died, I transferred my older brother worship to Toney, but I could never seem to please him. He used my adoration to make me his lackey. I gladly played the part, but never well enough for him.Somehow my parents loved me in spite of the flaws Toney advertised for me. Toney and my parents believed I would never be able to support myself, that I would never find any self-discipline or focus, that I would always be a lost boy that my parents and when they were gone, Toney, would have to rescue.I’m sad for my brother’s hurt. I’m sure that my unconscious narcissism added to his pain and sullenness. But of all of us, Toney has descendants, two wonderful healthy boys and they each have children. Kevin has two boys and a girl and Carter has two girls. Both are fortunate in their marriages. Toney was a great granddad.And then there on the ground in my family’s burial plot I see Betsy’s headstone. Betsy was born when I was six with Down syndrome. I joined my mother in caring for her. At ten I told mother I would take care of her when mother was gone and I did. I began that role while mother was still alive and Betsy came to live near me in Tennessee in a group home.Betsy resented me. “You are not my daddy,” she would say. Betsy did not make the job of taking care of her easy. She had my father’s angry temper and she felt often wronged by the world. The truth was that she was often a victim. The world and life did sometimes give her the last crumb of the loaf.I did my best to take her part and advocate for her. Sometimes I succeeded, but I never heard her say thank you. She brought out my worst self, my impatience, my need for control, my desire to find a permanent solution. When she was fifty, one came. She died. I thought I would feel relieved on that day. I didn’t. I miss her today. Now that she’s gone, I see how she grounded me, gave me a sense of purpose, connected me to my family. Today, when I talk to Betsy I ask for her forgiveness. I could have been a much better brother, a much more patient and forgiving caretaker.I talk to these people, my deceased ancestors often, just as I suspect the Chinese do. When I do, I feel connected to things transcendent. These conversations feel like prayer to me, like some version of talking to God, maybe better than talking to a God that I can’t comprehend. Maybe that’s why Christian’s need Jesus. But me, I think I might get more from the talks I have with my dead family. We left Rosehill Cemetery and traveled on to Robert’s house in Washington, Arkansas. He had just returned two hours earlier from seeing his cardiologist in Little Rock. He was confined to his bed, except when he gets up to go to the bathroom. He was on oxygen, tubes in his nose from an oxygen tank. His father and mother died of heart disease, when they were fifty. His brother and sister died the same way, when they were in their fifties. Robert never expected to live past sixty. His heart has been failing since he was in his early fifties. And he was still here, on this earth at age 76.Robert was one of Bill’s best friends. Robert identifies himself proudly as gay and bi-sexual. He has been married and divorced. Robert is a good friend to me and so many others.He loves me. I am as close to family as he has. I love Robert and he is a precious link to memories of my family and my childhood.And there he was in front of me, lying on his bed, feeble, weak, breathing heavily, able to say only a few words between each breath. I felt I was watching him  drift away. Again, I was not sure what seeing Robert like this meant, what was the message I was receiving here. It had something to do with mortality, Roberts and my own. I was curious about how Robert felt about dying. I asked him about it.Robert had given much thought to this and he had developed a theatrical event around his death. (Robert was a theatre major in college and loved acting). He had a giant headstone already placed in a Deaton family cemetery in Curtis, Arkansas. Can you imagine how Robert’s, mostly Republican, rifle in the back of their pick-up cousins, will feel about Robert’s giant headstone and he plans to write the names and dates of birth and death of many of his family members on that stone. We laughed together at this picture.Marietta and I didn’t stay long. As we left, I was sad, trying not the cry, thinking that this might have been the last time that I would see Robert.We were back on I-30 to Dallas by 3:00 P.M. We hit the outskirts of Dallas at about 5:30. As we approached the Dallas skyline, we saw its giant building reaching into a black sky sparkling with lightning.We saw a dark blanket of rain in from of us and in minutes we were engulfed in it, under buckets and sheets of torrential rain. We could barely see the tail lights of the car in front of us. We had the task of following the GPS on our phones almost blind, only able to see glimpses of the road signs. Our car sounded like we were parked directly under a water fall. We could barely hear one another shout over the din.The word terrified does not begin to capture how we felt. Thoughts went through our minds of a car plowing into us from behind or from the side or us veering into the oncoming traffic or us hitting the car in front (though that was less frightening because our pace was a crawl and we would not do much harm to a car in front of us if we did hit it).We called my cousin, Jerry, to tell him our predicament. It was not raining at his house. We felt as if a wicked witch had cast a spell and placed us in some mythical torrent. The amazing play nature performed for us made us frightened actors, a bewildered audience and weary travelers.We took wrong turns and the torrent turned with us. Water in the flooding roads lapped our hubcaps. Thunder and lightning struck only feet from us.Magically when we turned on the street that took us to Jerry’s neighborhood, the rain stopped. When we got to his house, his street and driveway were dry.Again, we were bewildered. Fate seemed to be playing with our heads. We had traveled through so many different psychological spaces in just a few hours.I believed I was being given a message about what I was supposed to learn on my trip to China. But I wasn’t sure what the message was.We had a wonderful dinner as guests of Jerry and Sharrylon at a comfortable fine restaurant where Jerry and Sharrylon are regulars. We were treated well, fed well and finally tucked safely into bed inside the womb Jerry and Sharrylon created for us. The next day Jerry and Sharrylon fed us breakfast and we were off to the Bishop Ranch Hotel in Santa Fe. This was a four star hotel in Santa Fe that Marietta found for us at $150 a night rate. We most dreaded this part of the trip across the hot desert plains of Texas. As we imagined, it was a 100° plus day. I drove in the morning. We ate lunch and then Marietta got behind the wheel. I napped as she drove. (As a passenger, I’m a backseat driver and I am critical of Marietta’s perfectly fine driving. So instead of being her critic I put my seat back, closed my eyes, put my hat over my closed eyes and enjoyed lying there, listening to the voice of an accomplished reader/actor read/perform a book on tape).I had been in mid-reverie for a couple of hours into the afternoon, when I heard a siren. I didn’t think much of it, until Marietta began to slow down and pull off the road to the right.A very polite female sheriff’s deputy gave Marietta a ticket for traveling 85 MPH in a 75 MPH zone. The ticket told Marietta to report to a courthouse in Wichita Falls, Texas.No matter that two years ago she got the same ticket in New Mexico. No matter that the policemen then told her that he gives people grace for 5 MPH over the speed limit but 10 MPH or more above, he won’t allow. No matter that then she said she had learned her lesson. No matter that she purposely put the car on cruise control, knowing she was 5 MPH above what she knew to be the safe range. And no matter that cars with Texas license plates seemed to be going as fast or faster, passing us.Here was another message from the Fates, I thought and again I wasn’t sure what the message was, except that it was time for me to drive. Marietta in spite of her ticket had moved us well along on our journey. We could easily make Santa Fe by 5:00 P.M. We met up with the great artery across America, I-40 or Route 66 and we turned west toward the Texan Panhandle, and New Mexico.Hours later, as we were about to exit I-40 north to Santa Fe we saw a desert storm west and north of us and headed directly into it, giving it no mind.In about fifteen minutes the sky above turned black. Giant raindrops began to drop infrequently on and about us. I barely needed my windshield wipers. Then “Bang.” It sounded as if a rock or bullet hit the car hood. A ball of ice ricocheted from the hood to the windshield right at my head. I put up my arm reflexively to protect myself. Then Bang, Bang… Bang Bang Bang… Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang and the banging continued. I slowed down but the banging didn’t.  Though frightened by the hail and the noise, we could see in front of us. Then the banging softened and slowed and the rains came in sheets just like in Dallas and we were almost blind. And then the sun shone brightly in our faces as we turned west and we drove on as if nothing had happened.Stunned and dazed, we found ourselves on an interstate moving into Santa Fe proper, exiting onto Bishop’s road, as instructed by our GPS and in minutes we were parking in the parking lot of the Bishop Ranch Hotel, a quaint adobe complex of buildings. Marietta checked us in. I got our bags and Marietta led us to this palatial suite, where we fell on our beds in a heap, puzzled and shell shocked.Once we regained our composure, we went to the hotel’s version of supper and found out why we got a cheap rate. The hotel was about to close for renovations and they had no kitchen. Supper was a hamburger or chicken sandwich cooked on the patio grill with potato chips and baked beans with a candy bar for dessert.The sun was still up when we finished eating. We walked around the hotel campus. In addition to buildings with rooms to rent there was the chapel and the horse corral with about twenty well cared for horses. Our dog, Greta, was not sure what to make of those giant animals. She kept her distance.Exhausted from the day, we went to sleep when the sun went down, wondering what message the hail storm was sending about our China trip.Our destination the next day was a bed and breakfast in Escalante, Utah. The GPS calculated that it would be an easy day’s drive, about seven hours. Marietta planned the “obstecher” to Escalante as our usual do-something-on-the-way diversion from constant travel. She had reserved a guide to take us through one of the slot canyons in Escalante. We wanted to arrive early enough so that we could get up refreshed at 5:00 A.M. the next morning. The guide told Marietta that the early light was best and that it would not be so hot. The sand on the slot canyon floor can rise to 140°.I didn’t want to go straight from Santa Fe to Escalante. I wanted to go to Nucla, Colorado by way of the gold highway toward Durango.Nucla is the home of Don Colcord, who was featured in a New Yorker article by Peter Hessler. Nucla was founded in the 1890s by idealistic utopians who hoped Nucla would become the “center of Socialist government for the world.” The founders believed that “If a small colony of outlaws and refugees could build Rome and maintain a state for twelve hundred years, who could guess what a well-organized colony of intelligent humanitarians may accomplish.”As you might guess, this experiment failed. Nucla, as a town in the desert, somehow survived with a dwindling population of currently around 700 people.What attracted me to Nucla was how the community organized around Don Colcord, the local pharmacist and the only source of medical care or advice in a fifty mile radius of Nucla. Don organized the Fourth of July celebrations and is the President of the bowling league and is the home game announcer for Nucla High School Friday night eight-on-eight football games. He owns the apothecary shop which has shelves filled with rows of groceries, a row of gift cards, a Pepsi fountain and is decorated with two mounted mule deer heads and an antelope head.Don gives shots, takes blood pressure, recommends over the counter arthritis remedies of hydrocronic acid made of rooster combs. He mixes tincture of benzoin for rodeo riders to put on their hands to make them tacky so they can hold on to the halter of a bucking bull without getting blisters and the same ointment for diaper rash.Don is in his early sixties, according to Hessler and “the most talkative friendly person for four thousand miles.” In describing Don, Hessler wrote that Don’s experience seemed to have taught him that “there is something solitary and unknowable about every human life. He saw connections of a different sort. These people (the folk of Nucla) and incidents (described by Don to Hessler of events in Nucla) were more like spokes on a wheel. They didn’t touch directly, but each was linked to something bigger, and Don’s role was to try to keep the whole thing moving as best he could.”Peter Hessler described Nucla as the place where, “Highway 96 dead-ends into Main Street…The nearest traffic light is an hour and a half away. When old ranching couples drive their pick-ups into Nucla, the wives leave the passenger’s side empty and sit in the middle of the front seat, close enough to touch their husbands. It is as if something about the landscape – those endless hills, that vacant sky – makes a person appreciate the intimacy of a Ford F-150 cab.”Peter Hessler, you may recognize, is the author of Oracle Bones and River Town. He is a noted China expert. He lives in a small Colorado town about 150 miles from Nucla. I wanted to see this idyllic community for myself and see if I could find something in common with the beauty Hessler described in Nucla and what I might later see in China.So we were off, first to drive the Gold Highway, then to Nucla and then to Escalante. I figured a ten hour drive or so.The gold highway wound about on a ledge of a canyon dug over centuries by a fast running stream. The road had several drive out viewpoints with historical markers describing gold and silver mining and Native American trade routes.The views were spectacular. The curves and other sight-seeing drivers slowed the traffic. We were later than I expected when we turned west toward Nucla.We drove through a desolate desert. We arrived at about 4:30 on a Sunday. Hessler was right. Nucla had no stop light. There was also no life, no cars moving on the road and only a few were parked on the streets. The small homes looked like square trailers scattered about desert lots. Some homes were fenced and a few dogs barked when we got out of our car. I had difficulty finding the beauty that Hessler describe. The only store open was a liquor store that doubled as the home of its owner, a sixty year old grandmother, named Dot. Her store was also the closest thing to a public restroom that we saw and Marietta and I, both, had to go.We parked the car in the shade side of the deserted street for my dog, Greta, and when we opened the car door, we felt a sudden blast of heat. We walked across the street to the liquor store, opened the squeaky front door and entered an empty store. Dot entered through a back opening in the store. I asked to use the restroom. She frowned, said, “I guess it will be okay.” And she showed me into her apartment, where she had some well worn children’s toys and an old high chair. “These are for my grandchild,” she said. “I keep him most weekdays.” She showed me a closet door, opened it and pulled a string. A light flashed on to expose a commode, a sink and a concrete floor.I felt as if I was intruding into a place I did not belong, but I had to go. When I emerged back into the store, Marietta had introduced herself and was buying a couple of cokes and some peanuts and had explained our interest in Nucla and Doctor Don and The Apothecary across the street.“I worked for ten years for the Doc across the street,” Dot said. “I know ‘bout that article. Since that came out, they’ve done a documentary on him and they are planning a television show with the main character patterned after Doc. I would call him and tell him to come talk to you and open his store for you to see, but he is having dinner at the Junction (Grand Junction, Colorado) with some friends. It’s his birthday.”We left this deserted lifeless town at about 5:00 P.M. The contrast between the warmth and sense of community that Hessler saw in Nucla and the spiritless empty town we saw, raised several questions in my mind. Is this testimony to the power and ability of a writer to manufacture or magnify reality? Was this just an off day for Nucla? Are we such poor appreciators of life and beauty that we missed many obvious things that others see in Nucla? Was Nucla like a poor African village where the one wealthy chief runs things?The GPS estimated our travel time to Escalante to be about seven hours. I was dumbfounded. This was not my plan. I hoped to arrive no later than 8:00.Marietta looked at the map and confirmed that Escalante was indeed a long way from Nucla.  Panicked, we did not process our Nucla experience. As I write this it occurs to me that possibly the poverty and the sense of family may be what Nucla and China share. Nucla deserved more time and thought then we gave to it.My foot pressed the accelerator and I pushed us down the road as fast as I could. We got onto I-70 in no time. We ate a fast supper in Green River, Utah. It was still daylight when we exited I-70 onto Highway 24 South. On the Interstate our average speed was about 85 MPH. On deserted Highway 24, where I could see for miles in front of me, our average speed was closer to 90 MPH. The sun was setting when Highway 24 veered west into Capital Reef State Park.This land was reserved as a park because of its bizarre landscape. Highway 24 twists its way through the park’s rock formations called “Hoodoos”. These are sometimes giant rocks stacked on top of one another or towers carved away from the mountains that look like giant totem poles that one sees carved by Eskimos in Alaska. But these giant edifices were carved by nature.Traveling among these rocks, which to us looked like some mixture of gargoyles and sentinels, was like going on a frightening Halloween ride at a theme park. Our anxiety was already high because of the speed with which I took the Highway 24 twists and myriad of turns.  The shadows cast by these towering sculptures and the sometimes horrific expressions that seemed to be looking down on us from the rock faces we imagined were eerie, mystical and added to our fear. It was like driving fast through a never-ending grave yard with ghoulish giant headstones surrounding us. Marietta loved this mysterious place. Me not so much. It was 10:00 P.M. when we emerged from Highway 24 and Capitol Reef State Park to turn on famous scenic Highway 12.Marietta had called our bed and breakfast in Escalante to warn them about our late arrival. The proprietor was none too pleased. This made me even more anxious to hurry there. But Marietta had to have a rest stop. We were about an hour and a half from our destination. We had been traveling for about thirteen hours.A word about Highway 12, that is scenic Highway 12, a much narrower two lane road than Highway 24. While Highway 24 was straight and open until we turned into Hoodoland at Capitol Reef, Highway 12 was a narrow two-lane, winding, ribbon of road threaded on top of mountaintops with 90° drops of 500 feet on both sides of the road. I had driven this road in daylight before and was well aware of the precipice we would be traveling along in the now, dark, moonless night. I was exhausted, irritable and awake only because I was so anxious. I wanted to do all in my power so that our hosts did not have to wait up for us any longer than necessary.Once Marietta returned to the car, we were off into rural Utah at 10:00 at night. “Oh, it is so dark you can see the stars so clearly. They are magnificent aren’t they?” Marietta said. My hands choked the steering wheel. My neck and shoulders tightened. My foot pushed the accelerator to the floor and our marvelous diesel engine propelled us across this up and down winding road at 90 MPH and I couldn’t give a damn about the stars.In about five minutes I was alarmed by a herd of ten deer crossing the road 50 yards in front of us. I slowed, some, worried that one more deer left behind was about to jump into the road just in front of our car. Once past the deer, my hands merged into the steering wheel and my back muscles became granite. Soon after that, I saw cows lying on what shoulder there was of the road. I reassured myself with some self-talk that said, “Oh this was a mistake. These cows have broken out of their fence.” My pace did not slow and my anxiety remained.We rounded a curve and I saw them ten feet in front of me. I had no time to stop or brake, a mother skunk and six babies ambled across the road. I heard a “thump, thump, thump” and I felt the floor board vibrate under my feet. I waited for that smell but it never came. I can’t imagine they survived. A half mile down the road we passed a car heading for the skunk spray that surely came in our wake.Ten miles outside Escalante the highway cows again lay just off the road about three or so feet. This did not fit well with my previous self-talk about the cows being there by mistake. This fact was not a source of calm for me.Once in Escalante we drove around this two street town passing our destination three times, yelling at one another because we didn’t know where we were, and frustrated because we knew we were so near.Finally, we drove into the right driveway. I had to will my fingers to let go of the steering wheel. When I got out of the car, my body felt rigid and immovable. My humped shoulders would not fall. My lower back was so knotted that I felt I had to walk like Frankenstein.Of all the travel days on our trip, through the story of the lost boys, our confrontation with mortality, torrential floods, a reprimand from the sheriff’s deputy and maddening hail, this day’s journey was the most difficult and possibly the one most filled with opportunities to listen to what Fate was telling us.The next day was as sublime as the previous day was stressful. Our guide to the slot canyons arrived at 5:30 A.M. He waited until we finished a delightful breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon. We left Greta in our room, loaded into our guide’s truck and we were off by 7:00. We got in his dusty fifteen year old Toyota truck and he drove us on a country dirt road that was mostly passable by car. Only in a few places would a truck or another high clearance vehicle be an asset. After a rain, no car, only high clearance trucks would have been able to negotiate some of the road’s low places.As we drove, I told our guide about the cows next to the road the night before.“Oh,” he said, “that’s how it is here. This is free range territory. Ranchers set their cattle out on the government range land without any fences. The Utah legislature passed a law that says if you hit a cow, you owe the rancher for the loss of their cow.”I couldn’t believe how I had been more reckless than I imagined, driving 90 MPH on Highway 12 with cows all about and possibly on the road. Not only might we have been killed if we had hit a cow, we would have to pay to fix our car and pay for the cow.We arrived at the slot canyon parking lot. The area offered several options for slot canyon hikes. I’m not sure which one we took.We walked a mile to the opening of the slot canyon. Slot canyons, for those who don’t know, are passages created by sudden flows of water that cut through sandstone creating crevices in the ground some twenty to fifty feed deep and eight inches to twenty feet wide. You’ve likely seen pictures of light shining deeply into the ground illuminating extravagant pink, orange, red and blue/gray sparkles of sandstone reflecting this rare precious light.Marietta had provisioned us for our slot canyon hike with a cowboy hat, bottled water, and rock-climbing gloves. Her reading of descriptions of physical demands that might be placed on the hikers during this three to four hour trip intimidated her a bit, especially the eight inch clearance at places between canyon walls and the requirement of considerable upper body strength one needed to lift one’s self out of very tight spaces.After taking just a few steps into the canyon, it became clear that cowboy hats were a nuisance and gloves only marginally helpful. Our guide, however, was essential. Marietta was often stuck and unable to pull herself out of a cavern and into the passage. I too was sometimes confounded by the puzzle of where to put my foot or what rock to grab that would serve as secure purchase for my next move forward. Our guide either directed, pushed, pulled or lifted us through the two mile slot canyon.The beautiful colors discovered by the arrows of light made us forget for a time about the dangers that our canyon hike created. There was the danger of getting stuck and being unable to get one’s self out of one of the pockets inside the canyon, as well as, the danger from a flash flood coming from a rainstorm in the mountain miles away from the canyon, filling the narrow space with as much as fifteen feet of rushing water.Our guide knew the weather and where rain in far off mountains would create a stream headed for this particular canyon. There had been storms that created a canyon flood recently. In September of this year eight people drowned in a slot canyon flood. We were happy to be armed by our guide’s local knowledge and physical strength.When we emerged from the canyon, we met about ten other hikers entering our exit. When we got to the parking lot, several cars provided evidence that many more people had followed us into the canyon. Though we had passed four or five people going the opposite way, we were glad not to be any longer in those tight places, having to negotiate space with fifty or more hikers going the opposite way.Our guide was a naturalist, an expert on the desert plant life. He pointed out desert poisonous and nutritious berries. They looked exactly alike to us but he could discern the difference by looking at the different leaf patterns.On our way back our guide told us about a restaurant in town that he liked, Escalante Outfitters Café. He said that they had good pizzas.Once back, Marietta and I negotiated leaving a day early. Marietta had planned to stay two nights and explore other sites in this beautiful desert topography. Salt Lake was only five hours away and I was ready to finish our journey.Our compromise was to eat our last meal on the road at Escalante Outfitters Café and head home to our Deer Valley Condo. The café eluded us at first. It was further down from the town center on Highway 12 than we imagined.There were two parts to this business/café, one half-filled with ropes, guide books, fishing and hiking gear and the other half served as the café with six four-top tables and a bakery counter. We found an empty table next to the bakery counter. We saw someone come in and buy a beautiful, shinny loaf of braided bread. The sight of that gorgeous loaf of bread and the smells coming from the bakery counter pulled us out of our seats. We stood to look in the glass counter case filled with  giant apple pies, strawberry/rhubarb pies, berry pies, a variety of freshly baked artisan breads and bagels, pastries filled with custard and chocolate. I have no words to describe the sensuality of the bakery counter’s contents.Eventually we found our seats, now with menus to peruse. Enclosed please find the Café menu:StartersEscalante Bruschetta - $8.95Ovoline mozzarella, slow roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic &fresh basil served on toasted focaccia bread, toppedwith balsamic vinaigrette & olive oilSourdough Breadsticks - $8.95Homemade sourdough bread sticks topped with garlic &parmesan cheese, served with marinara dipping sauceThe Accidental Tourist - $10.95A plate of toasted focaccia bread, prosciutto slices, kalamata olives,artichoke hearts, pepperoncini, ham, tomato & garlic infused olive oilHouse Salad - $5.95A bed of mixed field greens & fresh veggieswith your choice of dressingChips & Salsa - $2.95If you find yourself stuck in the middle of Utah &you just wanna hang out, chips & salsa might be the answerArugula Prosciutto Rusk - $10.95A thin sourdough rusk, covered with an artichoke spread &topped with arugula tossed in a lemon vinaigrettewith prosciutto & grated parmesan Salad DressingsHouse Balsamic Vinaigrette, House Classic Caesar, Raspberry Vin­aigrette, Ranch,Blue Cheese, & Olive Oil and VinegarSignature SaladsClassic Caesar Salad - $12.50This is the way a Caesar should be served, with a virgin olive oilbase & this house crafted dressing packs a punch, with romaine lettuce, red onion &topped with your choice of chicken or Spanish anchovy filetsThe Homesteader’s Delight -$10.50Fresh ovoline mozzarella, vine ripe tomatoes & kalamata oliveson a bed of field greens that have been tossedin our homemade balsamic vinaigrettePosey Lake Smoked Trout - $12.95Smoked trout on a bed of field greens tossed in homemadebalsamic vinaigrette, served with sour-dough toast, cream cheese,capers, fresh tomato, onion and lemonFarmer’s Market Veggie - $10.50Spinach, red onion, goat cheese, slow roasted tomatoes tossedwith our house raspberry vinaigretteHouse Salad - $5.95A bed of mixed field greens & fresh veggieswith your choice of dressing Salad DressingsHouse Balsamic Vinaigrette, House Classic Caesar,Raspberry Vinaigrette, Ranch, Blue Cheese, & Olive Oil and Vinegar Baked ZitiZiti - $12.95Our ziti locks in traditional American-Italian flavors under layers ofcheese sauce, marinara, baked pasta and, of course mozzarella SandwichesAll sandwiches are served with a house salad, your choice of dressing or kettle chipsSheep Creek Chicken Salad - $9.95Classic chicken salad with almonds & grapes, served on a toastedbaguette with lettuce & tomatoSweet Water Tuna Sandwich - $9.95Served on a toasted baguette with lettuce, tomato & onionEscalante BLT- $10.50Applewood smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato on toastedfocaccia bread with spicy aioliPurple Hills Spicy Chicken - $10.50Grilled chicken & jalapenos covered in marinara sauce,mozzarella, & pepperoni, served hot on focaccia bread& drizzed with balsamic vinaigretteSunset Flat Veggie - $9.95Fresh sliced ovoline mozzarella cheese, vine ripe tomatoes,diced pepperoncini, tapenade dressing with lettuce & onion,served on toasted baguetteMuffaletta Hogs Back Rustica - $10.50Ham, prosciutto & provolone, lettuce, tomato & onion. Served on a toasted baguette & dressed with our homemade tapenade spreadCalzoneAll calzones are served with a house salad and your choice of dressingPersonalized Calzone - $12.95Build your own calzone, your choice of three toppings to bestuffed in your very own calzone creationNeon - $12.95Pesto sauce, chicken breast, onion, mushroom,tomato & mozzarella cheeseDay Hiker - $10.95A classic. Cheese & pepperoni. If you don’t think you caneat a whole pepperoni pizza, this is choice for you!   Salad DressingsHouse BalsamicVinaigretteHouse Classic CaesarRaspberry VinaigretteRanchBlue CheeseOlive Oil & VinegarCalzone SauceHomemade Red SauceOlive Oil & GarlicPestoKalamata TapenadeCalzone ToppingsPepperoniUtah SausageCanadian BaconGrilled ChickenRed OnionBell PeppersJalapeno PeppersBlack OlivesSpanish Green OlivesKalamata OlivesMushroomsFresh TomatoesPineappleArtichoke HeartsRoasted GarlicSpinachSpecialty ToppingsSlow Roasted TomatoesApplewood Smoked BaconUtah Goat CheeseFeta CheeseSpecialty PizzasNeon - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95Pesto sauce, chicken breast, onion, mushroom,tomato & mozzarella cheese.Devil’s Garden - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95This is a veggie pizza has got some serious toppings. Tomato sauce, on­ion, mushroom, tomato, black olive, bell pepper, artichoke heart, feta, mozzarella cheese on top of homemade red sauceKing’s Mesa - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95Step aside because we are bringing on the meat, grilled chicken, ham, pepperoni, smoked applewood bacon, & locally made Italian sausage. Your choice of sauceDay Hiker - 12” $13.95 | 16” $17.95Mozzarella, homemade red sauce & pepperoni,something to dream about while on the trailMoody Creek - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95Tomato sauce, fresh tomato, cloves of roasted garlic,mozzarella, feta cheese and finished with fresh basilPeek-A-Boo - 12” $16.95 | 16” $22.95For the pizza aficionado. Our homemade red sauce topped withmozzarella and Spanish anchovies. Pure brain foodChop Rock - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95This pizza is designed for a thin crust connoisseur. Olive oil & garlic sauce drizzled over a hand-tossed sourdough crust, topped with chicken & bacon, artichoke hearts, slow roasted tomatoes, feta and fresh basil.Big Horn - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95We have taken the classic muffaletta sandwich & converted it into a fantastic artisan pizza. Ham, goat cheese, & mozzarellaserved over a kalamata olive tapenade spreadSilver Falls - 12” $17.95 | 16” $25.95A mainstay on the pizza menu. Start with red sauce thenadd fresh spinach, feta, mushrooms, slow roasted tomatoes& red onions, topped with slices of ovoline mozzarella  CrustsHand-tossed thin crustTraditional sourdoughGluten-freePizza SauceHomemade Red SauceOlive Oil & GarlicPestoKalamata TapenadePizza ToppingsPepperoniUtah SausageCanadian BaconGrilled ChickenRed OnionBell PeppersJalapeno PeppersBlack OlivesSpanish Green OlivesKalamata OlivesMushroomsFresh TomatoesPineappleArtichoke HeartsRoasted GarlicSpinachSpecialty ToppingsSlow Roasted TomatoesApplewood Smoked BaconUtah Goat CheeseFeta CheeseFresh BasilSpanish AnchoviesSmoked Trout Personalized Pizza - 12” $12.95 | 16” $16.95Be the captain of your destiny & build your own masterpiece. Start bychoosing your sauce & let your imagination run wild. For the 12” eachadditional topping 1.00 or for specialty toppings $2.00,For the 16” each additional topping 2.00 or for specialty toppings $2.75  The menu doesn’t do justice to the presentation and the taste of the food. Wewatched dishes pouring out of the kitchen for Highway 12 bikers and travelers. Each dish looked like a painting. I ordered the Posey Lake Smoked Trout salad. Marietta ordered the Escalante BLT and it was the best BLT either of us had ever tasted.  The breads were especially good, the BLT’s focaccia bread and the bread and the bread stick assortment that came with my salad.The delicious mixture of tastes of these unique dishes delightfully merged in our mouths. And we split a hot piece of rhubarb/strawberry pie alamode for dessert.This was the best food I have ever eaten in my life from any restaurant. Marietta’s feasts are best best, but this is best restaurant meal I have ever had and I am sixty-nine years old and I have eaten in restaurants in Sante Fe, San Diego, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Germany, Italy, France and England. I can’t say enough about the food I ate and saw here and I haven’t mentioned the amazing pizza’s we saw coming out of the kitchen.Once we rolled out of the café and into our car, we had a uneventful trip back up Highway 12 to 70 to I-15 to I-80 to Park City and our condo. We arrived about 7:30 P.M., hit the grocery store and unpacked. Supper and our bed at 9:00 marked the end of our journey. That was our trip out. One other notable event happened, while we were in Park City for our six week stay. John and Rita, our good friends, our travel companions to China and our upstairs neighbors in our Fawngrove Condo had made many plans to prepare for our trip to China. Each of us hopes to be an expert in some area concerning China. Marietta, John and Rita worked on the language a bit. John along with Rita developed a historical perspective on China, John on more current history, Rita on China’s dynastic history.I hoped my contribution would be learning about Chinese thought and religion. I was especially interested in the Chinese custom of throwing coins and consulting the oldest known religious book in the world the I-Ching. The I-Ching has been used by the Chinese as an oracle for centuries.The oldest form requires the throwing of small sticks that resemble the sticks in a game of pick-up sticks. It has evolved into throwing three coins with sides we would call “heads” or “tails” and what the Chinese would call masculine (yang) or feminine (yin). Heads equals 2 and tails 3.I used the Wilhelm version of the I-Ching, because it had Carl Jung’s aforementioned preface. To get an oracle reading one asks a question and throws the coins. One throw of the coins produces and odd or even number. An odd number represents an unbroken straight line and even number represents a broken line or a straight line with a space in the middle. The lines form from the bottom up. To form what’s called a “hexagram” one throws the coins six times, producing six lines.  If the coins produced a six or a nine, one looks specifically at that line, ready for more information from that line, e.g., 6 at the top. One looks for the hexagram and the reading that comes with the hexagram to find the answer to one’s question.I have a version of another oracle in my office and I enjoy playing an oracle game with my clients. It is amazing how wise I have found the oracle’s answers to be.I hope to suggest to our small traveling group that we consult the I-Ching everyday of our trip. To that end I offered myself as a demonstration. For some time I have been trying to collect a group of writers interested in writing about the soul and mind of the South.I have already written about fifteen essays myself. The interest has evolved into an idea to write another version of the famous book of Southern essays published in 1936, I’ll Take My Stand.I don’t know how to approach this project. So in front of John, Rita and Marietta I asked this question, threw the coins, built a hexagram and found it in the book to be hexagram 17. I thought the reading it gave was on the nose for what I needed to do. I had to put myself last and others first. I had to gather friends around me. It suggested that I had heavy load to carry. (Yes, I agreed this was a monumental project to undertake), that would reach distant regions (I hoped so). As the strong element, I must place myself under the weak to obtain a following. I must follow the laws of nature or the Tao. To me this meant follow the best spiritual values of compassion, integrity and respect for others.All this made great sense until I discovered that I had read the wrong hexagram. Actually the correct hexagram was number 57.When I read this hexagram, it seemed relevant as well. The title of the hexagram was “The Gentle.” Go forward, penetrate slowly and cautiously. This requires character and judgment. By being gentle I can weigh things better, remain unnoticed and take special circumstances into account. It would further me to have a sense of direction and to consult a great man. (It was as obvious to me that this great man must be Ray Waddle, whom I hoped would take a leadership role).The bungling of my I-Ching consultation proved the old social psychology principle about fortune-telling. Fortune tellers give people what social psychology calls “Barnum statements.” These are general statements that a person can easily imagine may be true and applicable to themselves.Here were two distinctly different readings that Fate gave to me. When I told John and Rita about my mistake, they laughed. This must have demonstrated to them the silliness of this idea, but they were glad to play this game with me, just as they were interested in playing Ma-Jong with us as well.Me, on the other hand, still felt that Fate had played through my mistake, giving me two pieces of wisdom that could be useful to me in my project. Two weeks before I was to depart for China I was asked to attend a seminar by Polly Young-Eisendarth, a Buddhist psychotherapist from Vermont. I had to go to represent an organization sponsoring the workshop. Once Polly began to speak, I felt Fate had brought me to hear her. She outlined the five basic Buddhist principles. I had already planned to study Confucianism through Huston Smith’s book on world religions completing my assignment on Confucianism and being exposed to Polly’s version of Buddhism prepared to go to China.I want to examine how the Chinese spiritual values fit with my liberal Southern Calvinist – light version of Christianity. For this purpose I will lay out my understanding of Buddhism and Confucianism principles.  If you are not interested in Chinese Religion, you might wish to skip this part. BuddhismThe Three Marks of Human ExistenceDukkha:

1. Life is filled with dissatisfaction, anguish, stress, discontent, restlessness, gaps in clarity, confusion and imbalance or off-centeredness. Perfection is a silly irrelevant goal. Acceptance of life in confusion and emotional distress is a product of spiritual growth.

Dukkha has four truths:

1. All experiences which we believe we control or can control are ultimately dissatisfying.
2. The origin of Dukkha is our desire to ennoble, defend and extend our power and influence, our desire to please ourselves and our attempts to avoid life’s pain. These desires result in an inner life filled with painful cycles of death and rebirth.
3. When we can detach from our cravings and observe them without becoming their slaves, we find freedom and peace.
4. The path of liberation from Dukkha is to behave responsibly, cultivate discipline, practice mindfulness (equanimity and emotional balance) and meditate.

 Annicca:

2. Life and the universe is filled with ceaseless change, impermanence at all levels. Our spiritual goal is to accept and join with grace and equanimity the changing nature of things and to observe life as it changes. These changes come to us in ways we cannot predict or understand.

  Annata:

3. Though we sometimes experience ourselves as separate beings, we are not. There is no inner being or separate soul, no self. Everything is connected to everything else and things don’t exist apart from all that is. There is no birth or death, no good or evil, only the natural order of the universe.

 We must learn to live with Dukkha because everybody is captured inside this life force. It is through our brokenness that we discover wisdom. Embracing our brokenness is the door to peace.Anicca is the source of Dukkha. Impermanence and the constancy of change dashes all of our expectations and hopes. If we can walk into life’s chaos, rather than seeing change as loss, we can discover true freedom.We can do this with a powerful emotional tool that I call “grace” and Polly calls “equilibrium.” By this she means to be a friendly accepting audience to our experience, being aware of an emotional/psychological/spiritual spot that is a fulcrum or balance point between impermanence and the distress and pain it causes.We delude ourselves when we believe we are suffering alone or that we are unique and no one can understand us. We are like ants in an ant colony. We are trapped in an illusion of separateness, in a body, in attachment relationships and in a point inside an aging cycle. (If I believe my delusion, I am 69 years, four months, and 29 days). What we don’t see is that, as long as we see ourselves separate and are reactive to our emotions, we suffer death and rebirth over and over. We like to see ourselves as unchanging and continuous, but that is not true. We develop our narrative, defend our egos, excuse and rationalize our behaviors, but the truth is our lives and our deaths serve our species and are part of the natural way of all things. We are never separate, never alone. The more separate we see ourselves, the more pain we feel. We cannot control our lives. There is no such thing as security or safety. There is no ground. All is in process. This softens questions of blame causality and responsibility.Ideas of happiness, self-esteem and perfection are all traps that will increase our suffering. Our ideals of perfection are irrelevant and silly, and can cause great suffering because we are all broken and can never reach our ideal goals. The key to contentment is letting go of one’s self importance, stop struggling for self-esteem; do not fight shame; do not pursue happiness. These are only emotions and emotions cannot be captured and held or avoided. Emotions change like everything else.Mature spiritual growth requires an awareness that we are being cast about and in this casting about, we discover how broken we are and have become, broken beyond fixing. This discovery introduces us to humility and to a compassion for others whom we now see as broken too. It is in our shared brokenness that we discover our royal road to peace and this discovery is compassion. All of us are engaged in this search for meaning. We are all caught in a tragic world we do not control. Grounded in the reality of our brokenness, we value one another, not because of talent, wealth, or wisdom, but because that other person can never be replicated and we will eventually lose them.While this seems like a tragic view of life, it is not. Because once we realize that we don’t have control and life is like a game that always changes, we see the irony in our existence and we can laugh at ourselves.There are several ways we might respond to this realization that life and the universe is in constant flux. We can respond with fear. We can respond with denial or false bravado, believing that we can control life. Or we can see the changing universe’s invitation to us humans to join life’s changes and flow with the natural order or Dharma.There is an order to the constant change in the universe.  Life has cycles.  Everything is in balance. There is a natural harmony that we can discover through discipline practice and meditation. We humans often push into life’s wilderness or climb life’s mountain by imagining our own straight line and following it. But just think how easy it would be if we followed an already developed path or way. There is such a life path. In Buddhism it is called the middle way. It is the practice of non-extremism, a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence. It requires a tolerance of opposing ideas, seeing validity in both sides. It is an awareness that dualities are all false and that the truth integrates opposites into paradoxes. The middle way acknowledges both the appearance of permanence and the appearance of impermanence and understands how to bring these appearances together into one truth through meditation and mindfulness. The path is not straight. It winds about.It is by following this middle way that we find Nirvana or enlightenment or oneness with all there is. Confucianism developed as China’s response to Buddhism. In China Confucianism goes by a different name, Ruism. The reason is that Confucius did not originate this philosophy. He and his disciples merely codified it around 551 BCE.Westerners debate whether or not Ruism is a religion. It is not a religion with a god or gods. It’s more pantheistic or humanistic than it is theistic.  The Jesuits of the 16^th and 17^th century saw it as an ethical system quite compatible with Christianity. And clearly after looking closely there is great merit to this proposition. If this had remained the West’s view of Chinese religious thoughts and if Catholicism had continued to see Christianity and Confucianism as compatible rather than competitive, the history of the world might have been very different, but such was not to be. Pope Benedict XIV saw Catholicism and Ruism as incompatible and ordered a ban against Ruist rituals.Some today call Ruism a moral science or philosophy, not a religion. Others see it as a religion because it offers a means of ultimate transformation. It is certainly a socio-political doctrine with religious qualities.However it is defined, it has been the most influential system of moral thought in China for centuries. Some blame it for China’s failure to become powerful modern state in the 1800s. Other’s credit Ruism with China’s and East Asia’s strong work ethic and China, South Korea and Vietnam’s modern resurgence in the twenty-first century.Many in China encourage the government to make Ruism China’s state religion. In contemporary China Ruism is in resurgence. Schools, temples, new rites and Ruist communities are forming. There is a rebirth of new forms of Ruist popular activity everywhere. Old temples are being rebuilt and old cults of China’s pantheistic past are re-emerging as part of Ruism. Hong Kong Ruism has expanded to the mainland. Ruist hospitals are being built. Businesses are following Ruistic principles, as they recognize their social responsibility to build ethical business practices.It is not surprising that Ruism has re-emerged so strongly today, because, since the 12^th Century A.D. until the twentieth century applicants for important government posts had to score well on an examination of their knowledge of the five books that Confucius wrote or compiled over 2,000 years ago.Ruism was admired by Enlightenment philosophers, Voltaire and Diderot because Confucius had “no interest in falsehood (miracles or God); he did not pretend to be a prophet (to speak to God) he claimed no inspiration (from God); he taught no new religion; he used no delusions…” Voltaire.Leibniz appropriates some of his ideas from Ruism such as his term “simple substance” and “pre-established harmony.” The tenets of Ruism are consistent with Buddhism in that neither philosophy advocates the worship of a God. The nature of life is God, not an entity or an anthropomorphic deity. Buddhism and Ruism use different terms to describe their veneration of the natural order, but both have a pantheistic base.They differ significantly in the way they conceive Nature. While Buddhism considers life and the universe to be in constant flux and beyond human comprehension, Ruism considers there to be a natural order that humans can understand and trust. This is an order based on compassion, justice and respect for humankind. The cosmos is an interaction and balance between the forces of yin and yang. Everything revolves around relationships, the relationship of one human to another, of a son to his parents, a family to its community, a citizen to his government.There are natural rules or laws or customs that govern all relationship and if we understand them and live in harmony with them, we can find success, security and happiness.Buddhism also believes that there are natural ways of living but that one of nature’s principles is that all things are impermanent.  Expectations of others and the future create human suffering and that human suffering is inevitable.These two philosophies reflect the two different versions of how the Bible describes the birth of human existence. The first Biblical creation story (exactly opposite the second) is that the universe and earth and its creatures were all God’s creation and all good. And that man was created in the image of God and that men and women were good.The second version was that man (Adam) and woman (Eve) ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and their need to judge others and the world, as God does, dooms humankind to lives of suffering.The first Biblical version of creation agrees with Ruism that man and life is good, while the second Biblical version of creation agrees with the Buddhist notion of Dukkha, i.e., life is scary. There is no safe harbor. Our desires bring us pain. Confucius supposedly wrote or compiled five texts that are the Ruist holy books. They are the aforementioned I-Ching, the Book of Songs i.e., the earliest anthology of Chinese songs and poems, the Book of History, a compilation of speeches and records of events that embody the ethical way to govern. This book proposes a very Christian and psychological way to govern based on responsibility and trust, not on fear and punishment. Government is formed around a social contract (see Rousseau) of harmony where cooperation, not competition, is emphasized and rules of conduct based on trust and social accountability and compassion are taught. I presume that Confucius advocated that governors treat misconduct as you would an ADD child, admonish, remind, extract a promise not to behave that way again and be compassionate and patient until the person learns. (No need for capital punishment).The fourth book is the Book of Rites which defines norms, rules and laws responsible for the four functional occupations farmer, Scholar, artisan, and merchant.The fifth book is the Chronicle of the Spring and Autumn Annals which describe the seasonal rites that are used to reanimate the old in order to attain the new. The ultimate goal of human existence is to join the harmony of the heavens or Tian. The principle of Heaven is the order of creation and the structure of universal authority. The essence of this universal authority is seen in the character of the human compassionate mind. Compassion is the virtue endowed by Heaven. It is the path to the oneness with Tain (heaven), the way to join one’s body with all things. Tain or Heaven or God is the “Great Whole.” It is the key concept to Ruism.Confucius says that it is possible to know the movement of the Tain. We humans can find where we belong in the universe. Tain gave humans life and the innate understanding of virtue. This innate understanding is compassion.Religious rituals provide a means for overcoming the ego and to generate the proper spirit of compassion necessary for a good life.Ruism’s strongest emphasis is ethics and is characterized by the promotion of virtues expressed in the Five Constants. These are: Rén (humaneness), Yi (righteousness, fairness and social justice), Li (rites, symbols and rituals), Zhi (knowledge of how to behave in daily living), Xin (integrity, respect for authority and reverence). Rén (Humaneness)Rén is the feeling one has when one has behaved in an altruistic manner, exemplified by an adult’s protective feelings toward a child. Heaven or Tian has endowed nature with this care, consideration and compassion and to join Heaven is to behave humanely. When Confucius was asked to describe Rén, he said, “One should see nothing improper, hear nothing improper, say nothing improper and do nothing improper.” When following the rules of Rén one enlarges himself, first by enlarging others. One establishes himself, first by establishing others. Yi (Righteousness)Yi represents righteousness, an innate sense of fairness and a desire for justice. Yi seeks to treat people equally. In Yi there is a sense of shame and honor and a willingness to correctly attribute honor to the deserving and shame to others who act to harm others or the public good. Li (Rites)Li has two meanings. One refers to cosmic law. In that context Li means ratio or the right order or harmony or reason. In the context of the second meaning, relative to individual behavior, Li means mores, custom and rules for appropriate behavior. Confucius, a student of government, imagined that governors would and should encourage all people to seek human perfection in behavior and in spirit. If governments encouraged and nurtured Li, Confucius believed that punishment would become less relevant. Zhi (Knowledge)I am unclear what Zhi represents. Perhaps this is the place where appropriate behavior and attitudes are described. In his writings Confucius discusses such subjects as tea drinking, titles, learning, mourning, lamentation, preparing and eating rice, fasting clothes, couches. Confucius believed that humans could achieve perfection if they followed the rules of appropriate behavior.This is much like the book of Leviticus in the Bible where writers got carried away defining precise norms for human conduct. Confucius makes clear that compassion is the law’s guiding force, but he often overemphasized the design for how humans were to behave. (I will comment on this tension between the law and the heart later.) Xin (Integrity)I am also not sure what this means. I suspect it means modesty, cleanliness, not over-promising, accountability and personal responsibility. Confucius is best known for his emphasis on loyalty (Zhong) and filial piety (Xiao). LoyaltyOften the phrase, “Might makes right” is attributed to Confucius, but that is not what he said. Rather he said a superior should be obeyed because of his moral rectitude. Loyalty does not mean subservience, because reciprocal loyalty is demanded from the superior as well. Confucius wrote “a prince should employ his minister according to the rules of propriety; ministers should serve their prince with faithfulness.” A Ruist scholar, Mencius said, “When the prince regards his ministers as his hands and feet, his ministers regard their prince as their belly and heart; when the prince regards his ministers as his dogs and horses, his ministers regard him as robber and enemy.” An incompetent ruler should be overthrown.With that said, a good Ruist is expected to remonstrate to his superiors and a ruler should accept a minister’s advice. In later times more emphasis was placed on the obligations of the ruled to the ruler. Filial Piety (Xiao)This is the respect of one’s parents and ancestors. It is central to Ruist ethics. It means be good to one’s parents and bring honor to their name by one’s behavior. One should not be rebellious and should show love, respect and support. One should ensure male heirs, uphold fraternity among brothers, advise parents well, display sorrow at the death of one’s parents and carry out sacrifice in their honor after their death.While China has always had a diversity of religious and philosophical thought, filial piety has been central to all of them. Knowing One’s PlacePart of the idea of loyalty and filial piety is the notion of knowing one’s place and performing inside one’s role. Everyone’s job is to play well the role they are given.When asked about how government might bring about social harmony, Confucius said, “There is (good) government, when the prince is the prince and the minister is the minister; when the father is the father, and the son is the son.”Juniors owe reverence to their seniors and seniors have the duty of benevolence and concern toward juniors. The same is true for husbands and wives.There are five relationships that create iconic roles. They are: Ruler to ruled, father to son, husband to wife, elder brother to younger brother, friend to friend. Specific duties are prescribed to each role in these five relationships. In all relationships high reverence is reserved for elders. In Rusim there is much emphasis on human perfection or the superior man (Junzi). In our world the term might be “gentleman.” Junzi in Chinese society is second only to the sage. There are many characteristics of the Junzi. They don’t have to have wealth or high status. They tend to speak less and do more. They are loyal, obedient, knowledgeable and self-disciplined. They gain inner peace through virtue. It is the Junzi who sustains the functions of good government and social status based on ethical values. The Junzi enforces his rule over his subjects by acting virtuously. Government behaves like a family, the Junzi being a beacon of filial piety.   Rectification of NamesRuism makes a big deal over calling things by the right names. Many mistakes are made in human communication by misspeaking and mishearing. Knowing the proper words to use is important to the Chinese.Social disorder comes from the failure to perceive, understand and deal with reality. The Jinzu considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately and also what he speaks be spoken in the right tone or voice.Of great significance is Ruism’s emphasis on advancement according to merit, not pedigree. This replaces nobility of blood with nobility of virtue. This was the purpose of giving examinations on the five books. The person’s who merited a high score were given significant responsibilities in government and guaranteed a good life. The practice of meritocracy still exists today in Chinese culture, including Taiwan, Singapore, Viet Nam and Korea. Now I have laid out most of the foundation for my quest. They quest has many parts. The first part is to listen to the I-Ching. The second is to place the pieces of our journey to Utah on a metaphorical table and try to put the pieces together as if these pieces formed a mystical message to me about the current state of my life, my next set of challenges and its ultimate meaning. The third is to piece together Chinese metaphysics with my own version of Christianity.I will begin with the third first. I am a Buddhist in that I believe Dukkha or suffering is a part of life, that we make most our own misery by wanting, expecting, hoping and believing. I am a Christian who believes that we worry over the silliest things, making ourselves unhappy, when we could be like the lilies of the field.I am Ruist, who believes that we should discover our talents through life’s tests and that we should be given our roles in life based on our merit.I am a Christian who believes in the certain Salvation that comes from following the teachings of Jesus. This salvation, for me has nothing to do with eternal life. It is the salvation that redeems shame and transforms it into honor; that takes the status ladder of social hierarchies and lays it flat on the ground; that uses mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn and create, not as reasons to punish and blame. Salvation comes when we confess our brokenness, our confusion, our ineptness. It comes when we see the hopelessness of achieving perfection for ourselves and also see that everyone is the same, broken and unable to be fixed in this life. It is when we see our shared imperfection that we understand that all humans are the same, none better than any others. This vision of compassion and social justice is our salvation and it can happen right here on this earth, in this life. When we see this and confess our sins, we are saved from the better than/less tortuous world that comes from a competitive, perfectionistic, damning society, and we are free to look anyone and everyone in the eye with equanimity and compassion. Once we discover compassion for ourselves and others, we are free.And this is what Buddha said. Our greatest human emotion/virtue is compassion. When we discover this place, we are free. Buddha and Jesus both tell us that we cannot control life or hold onto the perfect feeling of compassion. It comes to us by grace and just as it comes, it goes and we begin again our search for this magic place where we belong, standing equal to all others, broken and open and understanding. This place again is compassion.I am a Ruist and a Buddhist in that I am not focused on life after death. I too see my ego as the problem and believe that death will eventually rescue me from my need to defend it and that my escape from my ego will indeed be a blessing. In the meantime, the more I can focus on understanding empowering and loving those around me, the more peace and love I will find on this side of the river Styx. And that’s all I can know and all that I can have any influence over and even then I know very little and can find self-restraint and self-control only for fleeting moments.I am a Ruist in that I connect to the eternal by talking with my ancestors. I believe I carry on the genetic gift/burden of my parents and ancestors. I do the best to find ways to use my gifts to contribute to others and I do my best to overcome my inherited character flaws in hopes that I can move the character needle a tick or two forward and pass on this genetic piece as an improved version of my genes to the next generation.In the process of struggling with the worst of myself, I find it helpful to imagine my father, his father and his father having a conversation with one another and me. Each of them know exactly what it is in myself that I aim to conquer. They also know I will certainly lose, yet they advise me, root for me and take delight in the improvements I make over their version of the genetic archetype.In my conversations with my mother, brothers and sister, I have many regrets. I made life harder for all of them. Sometimes I see my mother watching over me, admonishing me to do better. And of course she is right. I can.I think my conversations might be similar to the Ruists conversations with their ancestors. Like them I hope to bring honor to my ancestors and do my duty to serve my family and those I love.I am a Christian who is grateful for the Bible and all its contradictions. I don’t believe the Bible makes very many clear statements. To me it is a compilation of oral history that came from many generations of retelling stories around tribal camp fires, until eventually, centuries after the fact, the stories were written down by authors who tried to demonstrate that the spiritual quest is confusing and that spiritual reality has room for many points of view. Hence, the two stories or creation contradict each other. The first says that man is made in God’s image and he is good. The second says that man sinned against God by eating from the fruit of wisdom and that because of that man will forever suffer and struggle with evil.Both can’t be correct and yet I believe they are. Like the Buddhists, I believe that real spiritual truths are paradoxes with propositions that contain their opposites. Buddhists believe that all religions are good and that there is no one true way. Buddhists and Ruists see their religions as compatible with most other religions whose aim is compassion, civility and kindness.My Christianity is Buddhist and Ruist in that my version sees that they are all paths to the same place and tolerance is essential to any true religion.Buddhism and Ruism form a paradoxical truth for me. They oppose one another, just like the two versions of the Creation story in Genesis. Ruism contends that we are good and life is a blessing. Buddhists contend that life sucks and that we make ourselves miserable. Ruists say that we can be perfect and find the path to righteousness through correct behavior. Buddhists say that we can never comprehend the infinite and that perfection is impossible and existence is constant chaos.Both Buddhist and Ruist contend that there is something in the infinite that provides a way to live. The Buddhist suggests that it is something like Aristotle’s “Golden Mean” or what the Buddhists call the “Middle Way.” The Ruist suggest that it is a prescribed path of playing correctly the role we are assigned in life.Christians too believe in “A Way: Study the Bible; listen to Jesus; love others; know God is love and join God by embodying God’s love in our daily lives.”I am a Buddhist who believes that we are not separate beings. We cannot be separated from our context. Our individual egos are an illusion or delusion. Our best path is to stop defending and protecting our egos, put our weapons down and open our arms.I am Ruist in that I believe our preconception with competition and punishment is the problem and that seeing our mistakes and those of others as mistakes, not definitions of character is how we should help one another learn to behave. I see all of us as wanting to do our part, contribute to the good and that if we look for this part of humanity in others, we will find it. We can appeal to that part and make suggestions for better ways to behave and contribute.I think this is what Christ taught when he said, “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.”I am taken by the Buddhist concept of equanimity in the face of change. We are going to feel all our emotions strongly from time to time. Our emotions will change. Our circumstances will too. If we can simply be patient, detach ourselves a bit, observe and not judge, see our wants as silly and not a way to any kind of lasting happiness and know that love, not happiness is our goal, then we can have some measure of peace.Part of the concept of equanimity is to avoid judging and evaluating. Rather than take a side, Buddhists describe their experience and avoid judgment.My reading of the Adam and Eve story is similar. We humans get in trouble when we take on God’s role of determining between good and bad and judging how others behave. When we take on this role of judge/evaluator, we can become punitive and competitive, taking us away from compassion and cooperation. With this interpretation of what a bite of the apple means in Genesis, Buddhist and Christians agree. Again, this is Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.I am a Ruist in that I too believe it is all about relationships. What matters in life is how we treat other people and how we play the roles that life gives us. I too believe that life’s crises don’t define us as much as how we fix and serve tea, how we dress, and in the tone of voice we use to speak. It is in these small tasks of daily living where we define our character and reveal our true selves.My grandfather had a small clay molded paper weight of three monkeys. One with its hands over his eyes, another with his hands over his ears and the third with his hand over his mouth.One day, my five year old self was playing at his house with my cousins. I was the loudest, most demanding and complaining of the group of children. He pulled me aside, showed me this statue and said, “David, you should behave like these monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”What he said puzzled me. I wondered why he would want me to be like a monkey. I didn’t give it much thought until five years ago at the age of 64, my cousin Ann reminded me of this story that I suspect she overheard and she gave me this paper weight that she gathered from his house after both of our grandparents were dead.And now here I am reading what Confucius said about how we should treat others and if we can do this, we will find “The Way.” Remember Confucius wrote: “One should see nothing improper, hear nothing improper, say nothing improper and do nothing improper.”I’m beginning to understand what my grandfather told me. And I agree with both him and Confucius.I also especially appreciate how Buddhism transforms what seems to be a tragic view of life into an exciting opportunity. Yes, things are always changing. The universe is constantly expanding and we have no control over what happens in our lives. And silly us, we try to influence and control the future, which causes us great pain.Here is what we miss when we try to control life and fail and want to give up. Yes, the game always changes and we are often frustrated. But if we can see reality as it is, in the moment, we can play. We can do things that change and co-create along with the Heavens. These things that we can do and create do not amount to much, nor do they have much influence in the cosmic picture, but when these things join with compassion and equanimity which are eternal, we can feel what it is like to be part of the infinite and join with the eternal. Buddha, this makes sense to me. These are the principles I want to use on this trip to examine myself, challenge myself and investigate what the universe is saying to me in our mystic conversation on the trip to Utah. This sums up what I consider to be the spiritual foundation for my quest. Now, I want to put the pieces of the puzzle on the table that came from our four-day trip to Utah.These are they: 1. The story of the lost boys, Paul and Tom. 2. My visit to Rose Hill Cemetery. 3. My visit with Robert who appeared to be close to death to me. 4. The deluge of rain in Dallas. 5. The speeding ticket we got crossing the Texas plains. 6. The hail beating our car like a drum. 7. Poor planning of the trip to Escalante. 8. Disappointed in Nucla. 9. The journey through the ghosts of the Hoodoos in Capital Reef State Park on Highway24. 10. The dangerous joining on Highway 12: (a) the deer crossing the road (b) the cows next to the road (c) the skunks we ran over on the road. 11. The hike through the slot canyon. 12. The exquisite meal at Escalante Outfitters Café. I set these out on the table now.  After we return from China, I will go back to them and see if I have any better way to understand them.  The Journey BeginsOur plan was to fly to Atlanta, then to LAX. We were to spend the night at an airport hotel and board a plane to San Francisco at 6:00 A.M., then a plane to Beijing at 11:00 A.M. on November 1, 2015.Flight to Atlanta, no worries. We sat opposite the gate for our LAX flight. I cleared my email & Marietta read a book on her I-Pad. At ten minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave, I looked up to see the host Delta airlines start to close the door to the gate. I raced over to the gate. Marietta’s head remained in her book. The host closing the door said, “Sorry, the plane is loaded you can’t get on.” I screamed, “Marietta.” She came. Another man the host recognized came to get on and she let us all on the plane. (Another omen? Or a warning about how easy it is to lose one’s way) The flight went well. I wrote and Marietta watched a movie.The plan landed. We met John and Rita at the hotel, had dinner, got up at 4:00 A.M., made the 6:00 flight to San Fransisco and the Beijing flight at 11:00 A.M. Marietta bought us a seat with more leg room. I took Benadryl and slept most of the way. Marietta, not a wink. She read books the whole way. When we arrived in Beijing I felt drugged and Marietta was exhausted. We had to wait inside the airport for two hours for our group to gather. We were Bus 5.Our bus took us to a dinner restaurant. There, the restaurant served us authentic Chinese food. I’m not sure how to describe the food. Waiters brought dishes full of one type of food, always a large bowl of sticky white rice, always spinach, often strips of delicious braised eggplant, sometimes bits of chicken, pork or beef mixed with a vegetable, usually ten dishes or more. Three or more dishes were some form of noodle dish. Never any dessert. Sometimes watermelon. Only once did the watermelon taste sweet and similar to July/August melons I love. But it was November after all. We were part of the table 15. We sat at a round table. Dishes were placed on a lazy Sarah and we spun the lazy Sarah and served ourselves. We conversed some with our table mates, but not much.After eating, Bus 5 took us to our hotel. The hotel was an excellent, modern new four-star hotel. Its only problem was that the air-conditioning was turned off for the year and our rooms were 78°F. We usually sleep at 68° or below.Though our exhaustion brought on sleep quickly, we were awake and restless after about four hours sleep. Morning wake-up call came at 6:30 and we awoke barely refreshed.The morning of the first day, our guide loaded his twenty nine jet-lagged weary travelers on our large greyhound size bus, Bus 5, for our trip to Peace Park, Beijing’s version of Central Park. Our guide informed us that the Chinese prefer communal exercise to exercising alone and they prefer to exercise outdoors, rather than in a gym. Once at the perk, he told us to expect to see many Chinese engaged in their daily exercise routines.As we unloaded from our Bus 5, we were confronted with people moving. A seventy year old man in a sweat suit sat on the ground, one leg curled under him and another extended straight in the air above his head. He moved from that pose to the splits. Ten feet from him, an older woman used a rail fence as a prop for stretching, but not just as a ballet bar, but for glut stretches and as a rigid brace to push against for a hip and back massage.A group of musicians and onlookers formed a circle, surrounding a dancing woman in her fifties, dressed in a colorful knee length green skirt with black stockings, a red jacket and a royal blue silk blouse. The musicians played and she danced a graceful set of slow steps and poses.Another group of women stood next to a boom box that played a, to them, familiar Chinese song with which they sang along. One sat in a wheelchair holding a microphone with a yellow handkerchief attached by a rubberband to the top of the microphone.Further into the tree filled, well manicured park a group of about 30 women danced a choreographed dance with what looked like a cloth paddleball racket, balancing a ball. Their movements were graceful, slow and synchronized to music.Two men played catch with what looked like a foosball, but they only used the backs of their hand to throw and catch the ball.Hundreds of people walked through the park. I only saw one man practicing Tai Xi. When I was taught Tai Xi the goal was to coordinate my movements with my breathing. This twenty something year old slowly, very, very, slowly picked up a foot and raised the opposite hand and placed it back in place and repeated the same motion with the other foot and opposite hand.I recognized this particular Tai Xi movement because Hank, my Tai Xi teacher from New Orleans, taught it to me. I stood some fifty yards from this man and tried to move in rhythm with him. I coordinated each of my movements with my breath, as I was taught. It took me five seconds or so between my exhaling and picking up my foot to inhaling and placing it down again on the ground. His foot and opposite hand were in the air for at least thirty seconds. He had begun his movements before I got there. I meditated in this way for fifteen minutes or so. When I finished, he was still at it and when I came back to this spot forty-five minutes later, he remained in the same movement trance.Our guide explained that most of the people in the park were older, retired folk, coming to Peace Park for exercise as part of their daily ritual.It was comfortable sweater weather, 55° F on this November morning. Our guide said that most of these people would be here on a cold 20° F day in January, bundled in warm clothes and following the same routines.Everywhere I turned in the park I saw women with brooms sweeping sidewalks and picking up gum wrappers, cigarette butts and other litter. The park was clean and well kept.(In addition to opium in the 1800s and McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chickens of today, we have exported cigarettes and most of the Chinese adults seem hooked.)After about ninety minutes in Peace Park, we loaded back onto Bus 5. This was the day we were to go to the Great Wall. The second day we would visit Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City and a neighborhood in Beijing where families lived in small quadrangled communities sharing a courtyard and toilet.I don’t want to waste time trying to describe these sites. Others have described much better than I can. I do want to write about how the 6000 years of Chinese civilization impacted me. The Chinese invented paper, gunpowder, iron and printing. They were the first to sail to America and around the Pacific. They were the first to use money as a medium of exchange. They had the first written holy books. Their religions are not necessarily competitive. Ruism is not considered by most Chinese as a religion. It is a description of how to live a moral life. Buddhism and specifically Taoism is a religion that was imported from India. It too did not consider itself to be the one true religion, but merely one path to the divine.Over the thousands of years of consistent symbols, rituals and traditions, the Chinese built layer upon layer of civilization, using Buddhist and Confucius thought as a guide for life.Ancient Chinese believed that there were nine layers in the universe with earth at the bottom. The universe consisted of three major parts: heaven, earth and people. Nature had repetitive cycles and an order of how things were arranged. Feng Shui described the proper natural way that humans should organize form and color in their towns, homes, farms, factories and government buildings.If humans imitate nature in their creations and designs, they will live in harmony with the gods. Yes, there were gods, but not one god. There was a pantheon of gods that were associated with nature. The sun god, the rain god, the ocean god, the mountain god, the god of the harvest, the river god, etc.Each god had a temple. The Chinese believe, like Odysseus, that the gods must be attended to properly if one was to have success. The Emperor’s primary duty was to attend properly to the gods on behalf of his people.Imagine how easily the Emperor was manipulated by his ministers and the priests. The Emperor surely felt overwhelmed from time to time by the burden of ruling. So he might gladly be distracted by his ceremonial duties so that the ministers could make decisions on his  behalf and the priests could receive sacrifices (or booty) from the Emperor.The point of all of this is that ideas like the nine layers of heaven were replicated over and over in Chinese buildings and art. For example, the doors to the forbidden city have nine bolts in rows across the doors, nine animals on each gable of the roof of the Emperor’s palace and nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine and a half rooms in the forbidden city. Everything created symbolized something in their metaphysical view of nature and the universe. Each generation embraced these symbols and then added another layer of creativity that used the symbols in another way.Mao, in his little Red book, adapted Ruist sayings for his purposes. And still the basic message is the same: persevere, don’t blame or judge others, all people deserve respect; the superior person shares and has compassion; and revolution will come when rulers fail to respect their people.Even today Chinese ruist work ethic and respect for authority dominate Chinese life. A twenty-story apartment building is built in six weeks. Their Olympic stadium, called the Bird’s Nest is an architectural marvel. Chinese cities are tearing down miles of blocks of old post World War II buildings and rebuilding rows of prefabricated high-rise apartment buildings. Major highway, subway or electric power plants are being built at an amazing pace.The Chinese culture has clearly supported an intelligence capable of overtaking the rest of the world, now that Deng Xioa Peng decided to open China to the world. No country has ever moved so many people out of poverty so fast. Their art may be hurt by censorship and oppression of the free flow of ideas, but their science and ingenuity is just beginning to demonstrate what it can do.As to mystery and the superstition that I came here to understand, it is not clearly evident. I don’t see it in modern China so much. The Emperor who buried himself with the clay figures of his army and court clearly is not enjoying eternal life as a god in heaven. Modern archeology makes the superstitions of dynastic China silly to its own people.Chinese schools teach calculus, science and accounting instead of Confucius.The principles of design found in Feng Shui and in nature still hold sway in Chinese architecture and design. The work ethic, the principles of emotional restraint, disciplined living, and the promotion of gracious kind and respectful behavior remain prominent in Chinese life.Chinese, according to our guides, Sharp and Peter, and our Chinese fellow travelers, remain very class conscious, even more than we in the U.S.All life is organized around the family, the education of the children (or child since often there was only one child per family for a time) and the care and support of parents.I told one of the Chinese, eating with us every day at our table, about the      I-Ching and she didn’t know what I was talking about. So as to my quest to try to understand life through mysticism, I have not yet found my teacher yet.This is not to say that the mystical approach to life is not powerful. Even a non-believer like Rita was affected by my daily consultation with the I-Ching. Two days ago I asked the I-Ching for guidance about how to approach the day. I was very tired. My back and hip hurt. I was wondering whether or not to stay in the hotel for the day.The I-Ching’s answer was hexagram number three, Difficulties pile up. Horse and Wagon part. The traveler is forced to unhitch. The I-Ching clearly told me not to go. But my mother went to visit the Terra Cota Soldiers in 1991 and liked that part of her visit to China better than any other. That was to be this day’s excursion. So I decided to go. I went. My back and hip were no worse for wear from the walking about the museum buildings. I was glad I went. For me the I-Ching clearly gave me wrong advice.Rita’s response to the reading demonstrates the power of suggestion that can come from a superstitious thought. All day on the trip she worried that our bus was going to wreck or break down. It didn’t.For me this demonstrates that using mystical ideas can open us to new ideas, ideas we might never have considered. And when we do, we are likely to combine our fears with superstitious suggestion.If we can avoid the knee-jerk response to focus on our fears, however, I still believe that perhaps mystical ideas can expand our mind and our perspective. November 9, 2015, I threw the I-Ching for this day. Sharp, our guide, had promised that today’s trip into the three tribes gorge on the Yangtze would be the highlight of our trip. We would see a mock wedding in full wedding dress. We would see monkeys and waterfalls and exposed sheer cliffs. The I-Ching agreed. I threw hexagram one, the Creative. It said, “the creative works sublime success… The creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony…”Not for me. My back hurt. Walking in the middle of hordes of people took the magic of this place away from me. Yes, there were photo ops, but most of them were in some way staged by actors, pretending to live here. We all stood in line with our cameras to take our turn at snapping the shutter. The pace was back breakingly slow with lots of standing and looking.Hexagram #1 addressed the great man and promised him success. Perhaps I am not a great man. Yes, this place had its own unique charm and beauty I suppose, but it took a man superior to me to enjoy it among the some 2000 tourists that descended upon this spot that had more in common with Dollywood than it did with the Appalachian Trail.I felt like either I was failing to appreciate the mystical relationship I have with the universe or the I-Ching was failing to live up to its billing.I’m beginning to wonder if I’m missing the point of a tour like this one. I am traveling on a boat carrying 300 paying passengers and most often in a bus with 29 passengers plus two guides and a driver. I eat each meal at table 15 with the same nine people.Perhaps China is not the point of the tour. Perhaps it is the story of my fellow travelers. As Confucius and Buddha say it is all about relationships and family and how we show interest and appreciation for one another.I find the people at my table to be among the most interesting people on our trip. There are nine of us, as I mentioned, me and Marietta; John and Rita, our dear friends from our condo in Fawngrove, Park City, Utah; Karl, Sarah and Marty, father, mother and daughter, Karl a fifty-plus year old computer programmer working for IBM, Sarah, his wife, a hospital radiological nurse and Marty their recently divorced thirty-year old daughter working as a radiology programmer in Holland. They are second and third generation Korean Americans. Tim and Angela, complete our table. They both migrated to the U.S. from China, met at the University of Texas, married and settled in Austin. Tim is seventy now, retired as an engineer. Angela is a retired nurse.  Tim serves public schools in Austin as a volunteer tutor. They love to travel and have been on many tours all over the world. This is their eighth tour of China. They are bi-lingual in English and Chinese and they know well Chinese food and culture. (Except Angela never heard of the I-Ching.)Rita and John married almost fifty years ago. John worked for Dupont and Rita taught school, until their son and daughter come along and when Rita saw that John’s bonus check was more than her teaching salary. Dupont moved them from Texas to Denmark, to Geneva, to Pennsylvania, to Connecticut to Wilmington. John retired from Dupont and worked for a Korean mining company. He managed a mine in Rock Springs, Wyoming. That is when they discovered and fell in love with Park City.They love art, culture and good food. They are always excited about travel. Rita’s back and hip are about as bad as mine. She carefully plans and organizes each trip she takes. She has never met a stranger. When I am avoiding social contact, Rita and Marietta are working the crowd with John right with them. I sit in the back of the room, writing, looking up from time to time.They struggle to balance their roles of grandparents and parents with their obligations in Park City with their love for travel. They yearn to love their in-law children and can’t exactly find the recipe but that won’t stop them from trying. They are a complete success as grandparents with four grandchildren, all girls, the oldest is eleven, the youngest less than a year.They are full of energy, you can’t wipe a smile from their faces and like us, they are close to 70 and love to ski.Somehow Rita and Marietta get along, even though they are both alpha females and both need to be in control. John rolls with the punches. Me, I’m self-absorbed and anxious and try not to show it. The two couples are comfortable with each other and seem to do well together.I will leave our fellow travelers for a moment to note two things from the trip. Yesterday, when we saw the Three Tribal Gorges and the falls, the guided pointed out to us two caves along a sheer cliff wall with boxes in them about 500 feet above us. These were family graves. Below, there were others. It seemed impossible that coffins might be lifted up to these caves thousands of years ago. The guide told us that no one understood how this was done. “It is a mystery,” she said. “It means they very important family. The higher they are, the more protection and the closer they are to the gods.”Today, we docked in a small town and on the mountain above the town were several mausoleums built into the side of the mountain above the square vegetable plots carved into the mountain. Again the same explanation. The higher up the mountain, the more prestige of the family. The other graves in the caves could not be tended but these could be with some great effort. It is a family’s duty in China to tend to the graves of their ancestors. One of the forces holding people on the land and away from the cities was the cultural expectation that they tend to these graves.Another matter of note, today the I-Ching regained some credibility. I ate some lychee fruit for dessert last night and I was awakened in the night by the fierce train it created in my stomach. This morning, when contemplating whether or not I should leave the boat and go on the excursion on a small flat bamboo river boat, I consulted the I-Ching. Its response was hexagram 9, The Taming Power of the Small. “The hexagram presents a configuration in which the strong element is temporarily held in leash by a weak element. It is only through gentleness that this can have a successful outcome.”So I ate cereal and banana for breakfast and stayed in my room and wrote while the others went on an adventure up one of the Yantzee tributaries. This was a good choice.  That day my colon still suffered with aftershocks from the night before. Now I will return to John and Rita. Last night something strange happened. We still don’t understand what happened. Like us, John and Rita bicker sometimes, but generally they are very warm and kind to each other.Last night our boat was in the first lock down the Yangtze River. Most of the passengers were out on deck watching the lock open giant steel doors to let our boat into the lock chamber, close the doors, fill the chamber with water, lifting our boat up some 100 feet to the next river level above. John and Rita stood on the top deck by the rail, awestruck by the engineering marvel in front of us, when Rita disappeared without a word.We watched for some ten more minutes before we returned to our cabin. We opened our door with our room key as usual. John inserted his key but his door wouldn’t open. He knocked. He knocked again. No one answered. He tried his key again. He used our phone to call Rita in the room. No answer.“She’s in there,” John said. “I must have done something to make her mad. But I have no idea what I did.”“No, she’s not in there,” I said. “Let me try to use your key and see if I can open it.” I tried. The red light came on, the sign for no admittance and I said, “You must have demagnetized your key. Go check with the front desk.”The manager came with a master key and opened the door.Rita sat on the bed working on pictures she had taken that day on her computer. Ten minutes later there was something else happening with the river lock that we wanted to see. We all traipsed back to the upper deck.Neither John nor Rita offered an explanation for what happened. John walked about with a countenance similar to my typical self. “You get what you get. I’m not making any effort to be nice unless I’m so moved.” His face had lost his usual smile.Not another word was said about it. We, for once, were wise enough not to bring it up.The next day, the smiling enthusiastic John and Rita knocked on our door to go to breakfast with us. At breakfast I sat next to Marty, who sat next to her father, Karl, who sat next to her mother (Karl’s wife), Sarah. Sarah began to talk about their 26-year-old son, Kenny, living in Boston.“He majored in restaurant and hotel management,” she said. “He is very charming and social.”“Last year,” Karl said, “We took our family on a Caribbean cruise over the Christmas holidays. I stayed in a room with my son. After one day, girls came knocking on our door looking for Kenny. The boy is talented that way.”“Yes, he’s adorable,” Sarah said. “But he has trouble with money. He’s not like Marty. She is very careful with money. Alex, he may let his bank account balance get as low as $14. His father doesn’t know how often I check his bank account and add money so he won’t have to pay late fees. When he comes for a visit, I have to pay him what he would’ve made at work, because he’s not earning any money visiting us, and of course, I have to buy his ticket.“In graduate school he was at the top of his class and he had the choice of interning at any hotel in the world he wanted. He chose a five-star $650 a night hotel in Bali. His second choice was a hotel in Switzerland. We had to pay his plane ticked to Bali and his living expenses there.“He made no money as an intern and the average monthly wage at the hotel was $200 per month. He found a tiny apartment for $300 per month. He has no idea about money.”“He shops only in New York at Barneys, “Karl said. “His jeans cost $270.”“He had my credit card until last year,” Sarah said. “I took it away from him and said you are 25 now, an adult. You should pay your own bills. He was fine with that. He just doesn’t worry about money. He loves what he does. He consulted with a restaurant entrepreneur last year developing a food truck restaurant business in New York. He was on Good Morning America demonstrating the operations and service of the food truck. He’s not making much money but he’s having fun. He works hard and loves what he’s doing. Marty likes her independence.”“And you like to take care of your children,” Marty fired back, betraying a rare flash of emotion in her face. “You paid for my ticket on this trip. You pay for me to fly back to L.A. You would pay me like you do Alex if I didn’t have six weeks paid vacation. You love being Mom.”“What do you do in Denmark?” I asked, thinking a change of subject was in order.“I’m a cardiac sonographer.  I take sonographic movies of the heart.”“I’ll bet you are better at reading sonograms than most cardiologists,” I said thinking about operating room nurses who only do surgery day in and day out and often know more about surgical procedures than some doctors who may only do surgery once a week.“No, it’s not like in the U.S. where cardiologists may only read my reports and not look at the sonograms. In Denmark, doctors look at the sonograms. They are very smart and careful there. I have a lot of respect for the doctors I work with.” As we got up from the table Karl sidled up to me and in a soft voice asked, “Do you ever consult families with adult children?”“Yes, I often do,” I answered.“Would you talk with me, Sarah and Marty?”“Of course, you can come to my room. I can pull a chair in from the balcony and Marietta can give us some privacy there.”“When can we do that?” he asked.“I’m not feeling well enough to go out on today’s excursion. If you can tolerate me taking a bathroom break when I need to, then you can come by my room, 505, at say 10:00 if you don’t mind missing the outing.”“No, this would be worth it,” he said. At 10:00 I was in my room writing. I had just finished a trip to the bathroom and felt emptied out. I heard a knock on the door, opened it and found father, mother and daughter at my door.“Come in,” I said. “Sarah can you and Karl take the small couch; Marty you can have the desk chair and I will take the aluminum chair from the balcony.”We took our respective seats and I began with my usual, “How can I help you?”“Marty and her mother,” Karl said, “are having some trouble, as you might have surmised from our conversation at breakfast. I wondered if you could help them work out their hard feelings.”“You are in this too,” Sarah said. “You take her side.”“I try not to take a side,” Karl said. “That’s why I wanted us to talk to Dr. McMillan.”“This is all nonsense,” Marty said. “I’m a thirty year old divorced woman. I’ve been married five years. I don’t need parents taking care of me anymore. I don’t want or need your advice or money.”“We don’t give you money,” Sarah said.“You paid for this trip and for all my plane tickets home,” Marty said.“Well yes, that’s because we want to see you,” her mother answered. “And you wouldn’t come because you couldn’t afford the ticket and we could. So that’s all.”“But mother, we talk on Skype every day. I don’t need to come home.”“But we miss you,” Sarah answered.“This is why I don’t want to have children,” Marty said.“Why is that?” I asked feeling that we were about to embark on a path well-worn between Marty and her mother.“Because, I don’t want to use guilt on them to make them be how I want them to be and I know me. I am just as controlling as she is. I would do this to my children too.”“You don’t know what you are saying,” Sarah said. “Children are such a joy. You and your brother have been the lights of our lives. You are my heart.”“I don’t want to be your heart,” Marty said. “I want to live my own life. I want to find my own way, a new way, not your way or your parent’s way. I don’t know where I’m going. I admit I’m lost. I failed at my first marriage because I was so tied to you and because he thought like you did. He wanted children and I didn’t. I want my life to be an adventure. You taught me to love travel. You gave me my wandering spirit, my longing for something new. I wanted to be an artist and major in art. You convinced me to major in biology and train for a medical job, like the one you have, reading MRI’s for doctors. I do more or less the same. I’m tired of living your life. I want to live my own.”“I have a good life,” Sarah said. “I love my husband, my job and my children. My parents were poor. We have worked hard to give you opportunities and to allow you to have a childhood that I didn’t have. I’ve worked since I was fifteen. I never asked my parents for anything, because they didn’t have it. What’s wrong with my life?”“Nothing, but it is your life. You chose security first. And you have done well. But I am a single woman. I don’t want to be tied to a husband. I don’t want children. I don’t want my longing for adventure to disappoint another man. You’ve told me not to give milk away, because a man, who can have milk for free won’t buy the cow.”“Yes, that’s true,” Karl said.“Well I’m not for sale and I don’t see why I have to buy a pig when from time to time I want a little sausage. I don’t need ‘a man’.”“I don’t understand you,” Sarah said. “My parents brought me to this country so that I could have a better life and so that I could give a better life to you. And here we are. I give you a better life and you reject it.”“You came to America to be free,” Marty said. “That’s what America stands for, Freedom. And I am free to make my own choices.”“Free to reject generations of family values,” Karl said. “We live for our family. You have been our purpose. We have assumed you would carry on for us, like we have for our parents.”“I will take care of you, when you need me to,” Marty said.“Yes, but who will take care of you when you are old?” Sarah asked.“I don’t know. That’s part of my adventure. I’m taking a risk, I know. But it is my risk to take.”“Dr. McMillan,” Karl said turning to me. “You have been awfully quiet.”“Yes, I have,” I agreed. “I’m taking in the love I see you have for each other. You care so much that it hurts. From what I heard about your son at breakfast, it’s my guess, Karl, that you want to stop subsidizing his extravagant lifestyle. Is that right?”“Yes.”“Is that why Sarah says you are not on her side, because you seem to agree with Sarah when it comes to Marty?”“Yes and no,” he said.“I want both of my children to be free and independent like we are. I feel strong as a man that we have been able to take care of our children and our parents. I want my children to have this feeling.”“I’ve said I will take care of you when the time comes,” Marty said. “I can’t speak for Alex.”“Yes, I know,” Karl responded. “And I know that if you are to be independent, you will make choices that I don’t support. So I didn’t support your choice to divorce. These has never been a divorce in either of our families. You are the first.”“But I won’t be the last,” Marty answered.“Perhaps and you are right. Your life is yours, not ours. But we can’t help but worry.”“I know you tell me that all the time. You have your life. Live yours and let me live mine,” Marty said.“I’m trying to do that,’ Karl said, “but I can’t satisfy your mother. I built her a master suite addition on our house. We have a 4,000 square foot house in L.A.. That didn’t make her happy.”“Yes, we have a big house,” Sarah said. “But our children are gone and the house is empty now.”“We go on several trips like this a year. We both love travel. But you still are not happy.”“A mother is as happy as her saddest child,” Sarah said.“Yes, I’m said. I deserve my sadness,” Marty said. “I deserve to make decisions and have my regrets, learn and try again. I don’t want to be happy. I want to live, grow and learn. I married too quickly because I didn’t want to give my milk away, like you told me. That was a mistake. I divorced a man who never got me. He got you. He liked you, but not me. He didn’t support my interest in art. He only wanted me to work, cook, clean and have babies. At least you, Dad, understood that if mother was to work as hard as she does that you have to help around the house. It didn’t take me long in that marriage to realize I didn’t want to have children with him.”“He is not all men,” Karl said.“No, but I never played with dolls as a girl,” Marty said. “I’ve never loved babies or children. I’m not that maternal.”“I wasn’t either when I was a child,” Sarah said.“But mother here are the facts. I’m not very maternal. I’m divorced. I’m thirty years old. My eggs start becoming infertile at 35. What chance do I have of meeting the right man, like Dad? What chance do I have of meeting him, solidifying a marriage with him and becoming pregnant with a child before I’m 35? And why should I fret about this and feel this pressure when I don’t think I would enjoy being a mother? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Who knows what will happen. I can’t read the future. But for now, this moment, I would like to be satisfied with my real life prospects and I would like for you to support my position.”“I too am sad that Marty may not have children,” I said. “I don’t have children and I regret that. But I’ve found ways to have children in other ways.“I think you have discovered the American dream. Your parents came here to give you options you would never have had in Korea, especially you Karl since your parents came from North Korea. You made the most of their choice and you are prosperous and you have given your parents grandchildren. You have done your part.“Now your daughter is free to make choices you never contemplated. She can develop her artistic talents. She can take risks for her creativity. Babies are not the only things she can make. She is smart, beautiful with a unique style and taste. She can explore the conversation between her work demands, her creative demands and her social needs in ways that were never an option for you. Marty said it. You came here to be free and to give your children choices. Now she has them. You can’t expect her to be really free and make the same choices you would. And if she takes a path never taken by anyone in your family before, you must know that she will have her share of failures. She will often feel lost. These frightening painful feelings are the result of real freedom and this is the gift you have given Marty. She is taking your gift and transforming her life with the pain that comes from risking.“I think, if you choose, you can be proud of her and happy that she is on her hero’s journey.”Sarah began to cry. She got up from the couch, come to Marty’s chair, collapsed on the floor in front of it, put her head in Marty’s lap and between her sobs said, “I can’t help but worry. You’re right. You have to go your own way. And you are. I’m proud of you for standing up to me. I don’t think I could’ve ever done that with my mother.”Marty stroked her mother’s hair and said, “I don’t’ know where I’m going, but you have made me strong. I know I will be alright. Of course, you can worry. But I would like your support.”“You have it,” Sarah said. She stood and Marty stood and they hugged. I wrote this story after that breakfast. I made up the story about the therapy session. At the lunch table the next day Marty stood behind her parents. I motioned with my index finger for her to come over to where I sat. Her face frowned, her shoulders moved back and up. I could tell I did something wrong. She walked around the table and said, “Motioning with your finger like you did is very offensive to Korean people.”“I’m sorry,” I said. I knew she had my narcissistic number. I told her that I wrote this story with her as the protagonist and asked her if she wanted to read it.She showed the obligatory interest, but I felt like I had just made an unforgivable social faux pas and I did not expect that she would show any real interest in my story. Of all the women on the trip she had the greatest feminine power. She was smart, well-dressed, young, beautiful and mysterious. Her oriental look magnified her allure. She frightened me and I promised myself to give her a wide berth for the rest of the trip. I sat next to Angela and Tom at dinner. I asked Angela, “Do you have any children?”“Yes,” she answered. “We have two, both lawyers and both in their thirties a son living in Seattle and a daughter in London. Both began working with big law firms out of law school. My daughter quit after four years, went back to school in England to get certification in education. She works for a non-profit in London to help poor children learn successfully. My son left his law firm to work as an in-house counsel for Amazon. Law firm work demands so much. They expected 100 hours a week. They are much happier now with their work.”“Do you have any grandchildren?”“No, we want grandchildren, but we don’t say anything. They know we want this. We don’t need to say. Do you have any children?” she asked me.“No, we tried to adopt and the birth mother changed her mind and ran off with our money and the child. This devastated us. When we recovered, we felt too old to be parents. We were 45 then, the age of many grandparents. We didn’t think it would be right for us to push two people with bad backs on a child.“How many tours have you been on?” I asked.“Oh, over 50.”“More than that,” Tom said, overhearing my question. This is our eighth trip to China. We’ve been to Europe several times, to Africa, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Viet Nam, and Korea. We’ve been to every continent except Antarctica and we have a tour booked there next November. We go abroad several times a year.”I wondered if travel filled an empty spot in their lives that otherwise would have been filled if their children gave them grandchildren. They were our age, but to me they seemed older and a bit more frail. They seemed to be a devoted couple pushing the life they had for all it was worth. You may or may not remember that in my discussion about Ruism that Confucius had five principles. I tried to describe them. In my research I found only a few sentences about two of the five, Zhi and Xin and I was not sure that I correctly defined them. I asked Sharp, our tour guide, if he would read my description of them and tell me whether or not I understood them correctly.He took what I wrote and promised to get back to me later. He read my metaphysical descriptions and made time to discuss them with me after our group talent show rehearsal. As we began to talk Debbie, a part of our bus five tour group, overheard us and asked if she might listen in on our conversation“You use the word ‘knowledge’ for Zhi,” Sharp began. “I think the more right word is ‘wisdom.’ Yes, it is wisdom in all things, especially the small things, just as you said. Zhi is about balance and remaining detached or neutral, taking no side but understanding both sides at the same time.“It is about humility, understanding that you are better than the worst and not as good as the best and aspiring to hold this middle place. It is especially about being humble in the face of the Great Nature. Zhi focuses on discovering harmony between man and nature and understanding one’s place in that harmony.“We Chinese have a god of time. The god of time helps us understand our place in nature. Nature’s day is like a human lifetime. While an ant may have a life span of a month, to an ant that may be a long time. We humans are like ants to the Great Nature and the god of time. We are inconsequential, yet part of the Universe. We cannot see clearly the infinite nature of reality. That is Zhi. And yes it includes instruction about small parts of daily living, making menial parts of daily life into a spiritual rituals that unite human living with the wisdom of nature. This is why Confucius was particular in his description of such things as drinking tea and wearing clothes. The superior man follows these rituals in every part of his life.”“What about Xin?” I asked.“You got that right,” he said. “There is not much to say about it.  It is how you do business. It has to do with credit or trust. It requires honesty, integrity, accountability and personal responsibility. You don’t blame others before you blame yourself. It has to do with loyalty as well.“This is how I understand these things. I am not a serious student of Confucius. You use the word Ruism. I have never heard of that. I am a Buddhist. I study Taoist philosophy. We believe in karma and past lives. We humans are here because we have failed. There are many levels of the universe. The earth is the last and lowest level. Our earthly existence is our last chance to get it right.”“This is like what Jews and Christians believe about Adam and Eve’s great fall from the Garden of Eden,” Debbie said.“Yes, exactly,” Sharp answered. “You understand. We missed many chances in our other lives because of our ego.”“What you call ego, Christians might call ‘man’s sinful nature’,” Debbie said.“Yes, that is correct again,” Sharp responded. “And we Buddhist believe like you that if we miss our chance to get it right in this earthly existence, we go to Hell. Christians have Hell too.”“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t believe in Hell. I can’t believe a loving God would condemn people to Hell. That’s one of the things that drew me to Buddhist thought was that I thought Buddhists didn’t believe in Hell.”“There are hundreds of versions of Buddhism,” Sharp said. “Some do not believe in Hell or in good and evil, but see all existence as a whole with every piece having a part, all behavior and things fitting into the same whole.”‘Yes, that’s what I read,” I said.“In my version of Buddhism there are many gods,” Sharp said. “They are all connected, like the parts of a gear box. We need help from each of the gods from time to time. These gods are part of the greater God, and subordinate on the level below the Great Nature. We have lived at these other levels before. For every day we have lived on earth, we have lived a thousand years in heaven on one of its various levels.”“In Buddhist thought how do we make our way back to heaven?” Debbie asked.“Buddhist believe that life has four stages,” Sharp replied. “The first is Chen or birth. The second is maturity. The third is decline and the fourth is death. Everything, even the Yangtze River, goes through these stages.“As we humans move through our lives, we begin very attached, full of desires and wants. Through the struggle to survive, the Great Nature gives us the opportunity to learn the futility of striving. When we mature, we have felt many disappointments. If we have paid attention, we have learned that our desires and our attempts to promote ourselves and our wants are the cause of our suffering. In the moments when we release the ego, detach from our wants and share in the future of our community, friends and family, rather than ourselves, we find Nirvana, real peace. If we discover this place, we find if inner harmony before we die and we develop a meditative practice that keeps us in this place of letting go, then we can move back up onto one of the other levels of the universe, when we die.”“I wonder what you think about this, Sharp,” I said. “In a commentary I read, it said that Confucius wrote his books as a reply or rebuke to Buddhism. Buddhism asserts that happiness as a goal is folly and that the Universe and reality is unknowable and constantly changing in ways we humans can never predict or understand. Striving for success is futile and as long as we strive and want, we will continue to create our own misery. What you just said had some of these elements.“Confucius wanted to say that success and happiness were possible. That life was good and nature was knowable. The path to happiness came from the principles of nature like the cycles of all life. And that if we lived by Nature’s rules, we would find happiness and success.“These two very different versions of life, life as dark, incomprehensible, and often painful versus life can be good if we follow the rules. This presents life as a puzzle solved by righteous living. These two versions of life are similar to the two versions of the creation story in Genesis. The first creation story agrees with Confucius. Life is good. We humans are good, made in God’s image. The second story agrees with Buddha. We humans can’t seem to help ourselves. We create our own suffering and the more we want to be like God, the more miserable we become. This is the ego problem and the fall from the Garden of Eden.“The Bible keeps presenting its readers with these contradictions, asserting each one to be true. It supports slavery in one story and frees slaves in the next. It sets out specific rules to live by in one place and in another says that righteous living, following the rules is not enough.“It seems to me that Buddhism and Confucius are having a conversation like this one. What do you think?”“There are two gods in the Bible,” Sharp said. “Jesus created heaven and earth. That’s one god and a second god threw Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Different gods do different things. This is not mystery to me.“The main path to peace is the same. It is detaching from the ego.”Debbie reentered the conversation, saying, “I’ve been reading a novel by J. M Forester and he said something that appeals to me that seems to be the opposite of this notion of peace through detachment. He said the meaning of human existence comes through connections. It is the connections we make in life that matter. It is how we make these connections, how we nurture and maintain them. It is about caring, loving and connecting, not detaching.”“I don’t disagree with that,” Sharp said. “It is a matter of emphasis. You cannot connect in a healthy way and at the same time try to control others. Your desire for what you want will always compete with what others want. You can love so much easier if you don’t judge or persuade, but instead listen and understand.  The goal of Buddhism is to discover compassion for others instead of convincing others of your way. This leads to better connections.“There are two kinds of connections, good connections and bad. We Buddhists try to have good connections. When we try to have good connections, but they remain bad, we tolerate without judging or reacting. As Jesus says if they slap one cheek, we turn the other cheek and offer that cheek to be slapped.“We do this because we know that the person who slapped us, may still be angry at us for something we did to them in another life. So, we must accept their insult graciously, until they can trust us again.”Marietta motioned for me to join her, John, and Rita for a drink, as I had agreed earlier. I thanked Sharp and left the depth of our metaphysical ruminating for a lighter conversation about the cliffs that rose above us, as we used the Yangtze River to pierce the great mountains on either side of us. Reflecting on this conversation.I was amazed at how fluidly Sharp moved through various metaphysical views, merging them into his own. Karma and past lives are Hindu concepts, yet they are part of Sharp’s religious topography. He used Biblical images and stories, weaving them into his religious landscape. His views of Buddhism and Confucianism merged with all of the above. He, and I think other Chinese, freely borrow from a variety of religious thought to build their own particular version of the metaphysical universe.In Sharp’s view there is no one path, or one right way. Sharp is a Baptist in his way, contending that he has a much right as anyone else to speculate about life after death and how to construct a meaningful human existence. Traveling on a tour puts us in a cocoon of the hospitality industry. The Chinese we meet are paid to serve us. And we are only one of thousands that come into and out of their lives. Something about the expression on the faces of these Chinese discomforts me.Yes, as you imagine, they smile at us a lot. One might think from observing them that the Chinese are happy people. Many foreigners have said this about the Chinese and many people coming to the South of the United States in 1840 said the same thing about negro slaves.The crew gave two talent shows for us during our four nights on the ship. The cast of the shows smiled as they performed, but their smiles seemed false to me. I wondered what feelings were behind these smiles.And why should they genuinely enjoy performing for us. Most of their audiences were overweight and or over fifty. While they were young, beautiful, women and handsome men in their twenties, dressed in costumes from thousands of years earlier.Our tour guide kept emphasizing that we were given authentic Chinese food, as we grazed one buffet after another with german potato salad or french fries or some form of rice noodles that one could find at any Pei Wei restaurant in the U.S. At breakfast they served some Chinese dishes but they also had corn flakes, cheerios, granola, fried eggs and French toast.I felt we got to know authentic Chinese people on the tour just as much as we were offered authentic Chinese food.There was one exception and this was our cabin attendant, Navy, the name he gave himself for us to call him. Of course, he worked for a tip from us. But he was diligent in his work. He eagerly talked with us and seemed to appreciate our interest. He was seventeen. He had worked on this ship for a year. He hoped to work his way up on the ship. He like this job for now, but he hoped for better in the future.He wanted to know my name. He asked questions about Nashville. His broken English didn’t hinder his desire to communicate. I felt he genuinely liked us. The other Chinese seemed to tolerate and manipulate us with a false smile and courteous words.  I couldn’t help but feel that there was so much more to them than they shared. When I finished writing my summary of our conversation with Debbie, I asked her if she would let me read these hand written pages to her to be sure I captured the essence of Sharp’s words. She agreed. I met her in the bar at the same small bar table where we spoke with Sharp the day before. She brought her husband, David with her.I read them my eight hand written pages. She confirmed that I had captured the gist of what was said. She asked about my purpose for writing this. I explained my quest to them. She told me that she had a mystical cosmic story that still puzzled her.Many years ago, she commissioned a four foot tall painting of her father standing in front of a chest of drawers. Several things from her life and her half-brother’s life were sitting on top of the chest of drawers, her silver hair brush and mirror, her brother’s baseball glove and trophy. One top drawer was open, but you couldn’t see what was inside.Her father had five wives. He abandoned three families. He abandoned his first wife while she was pregnant with her half-brother. He abandoned her and her mother, never to pay a penny of child support. He died owing her mother $20,000 of back child support.She had not had any contact with her father for years when she commissioned the painting. It was a gift to her older half-brother. She met her older brother years later when her mother encouraged her father to re-connect with him. Soon after this connection was made, her father abandoned her and her mother.Somehow her father’s absence from her life created an idealized image of him and a longing to know him. She thought her brother shared this longing. She drove the painting from Canada to Pennsylvania in her hatchback. She was right. Her brother loved the painting. She hoped someday that in her imagination she would be able to look inside that top drawer of the chest in the painting and find something meaningful from her father to her.After her father abandoned her (and repeatedly abandoned others) she had no contact with him, until she received a call from a social worker at a nearby hospital many years later. Her father was in need of a heart transplant. He needed a place to live until a donor heart could be located.She went to see him and agreed he could live with her for a few weeks, until he had his operation. He lived with her, had his operation and disappeared again. She didn’t hear from him for years, until one day she received another call from a hospital. Her father was dying. This time he was a long way from her home. She did not like to drive Canadian roads in winter. She took a train, then a bus that stopped at several small towns, until she got to the town of his hospital. She got off the bus and walked to his hospital. She sat in the waiting room for an hour before she found the courage to go to his room.When she opened the door, he thought she was her half-sister. Once he figured out who she was, she said to him, “I forgive you.”He replied, “And I forgive you.”These words stunned her so, that she turned and left. These were the last words they spoke to each other.“I kept wondering,” she said to me, “what the cosmic message was that the painting was sending me. I wanted to get the gift from my father that was in the drawer. I finally got the message after our last conversation. The drawer was empty.” We disembarked from the boat, flew from Chaing Chong to Shanghai, boarded a new bus and rode three hour to Suzkou. Two things of note happened in transit. One was a fight between Marietta and me. The second was a powerful bonding event for our tour group, Bus 5.First, to my fight with Marietta. I was practicing detachment. My mother used the practice of detachment to cope with my father when he embarrassed her, which was often. (In Marietta’s defense, I embarrass her more than she does me).Marietta has a behavior that irritates me. She can’t seem to promptly get out of a car or off a bus, an airplane or leave a restaurant, etc. She sees no purpose in standing in line and on this trip she has constantly lagged the group.I try to cope with this by detaching, by not nagging or being responsible for her to keep up. We have a tour guide, Sharp. He gathers the group and makes a count. It is his job to keep Marietta and the group connected, not mine. So I gave the job to him. I respond quickly when the group makes its next move and I leave Marietta to her own devices. This seemed to work pretty well, I thought. I don’t nag. I’m not embarrassed as I might be and I thought Marietta was fine taking care of herself.I was wrong. As we were about to leave the airport in Nanghui, we took one last “happy room” (bathroom) break. Sharp had us all gathered, except for one. That one was Marietta. We waited and waited. Sharp sent Rita in the bathroom to see about Marietta.My detachment defense faltered. I was embarrassed. When she finally emerged, I walked on a bit irritated, just behind Sharp with Marietta at the back of the pack as usual.When we got to the baggage claim, Marietta came up to me and said, “That’s a stupid way to carry the carry-on luggage.”I replied, “Are you enjoying admonishing me?”“Yes,” she said. “You won’t walk with me. You just go off on your own and ignore me.”“You were doing your usual passive aggressive routine of not keeping up,” I said. “And it embarrasses me.”“My plumbing’s no working. It took a long time,” she said.“It embarrasses me for you to always be the last one in the group,” I said. “Well, you will just have to be embarrassed.”“This is just one time,” I said. “How many times has this happened?”“Twice,” she said. “It hurts my feelings that you won’t walk with me.”“It hurts my feelings that you won’t walk with me and keep up with the group.”“They aren’t going to leave without us,” she said.“Yes, but we could try to cooperate.” No more was said. But I knew Marietta was right. She has a right to tend to her comfort and she was right. I had been ignoring her.The next morning Marietta was up and packed before I was and we walked together down the hall. The second event of note happened on the bus trip between Shanghai and Suzhou. Our local tour guide, Kathy, was holding forth about the history of the locale, something about Marco Polo thinking Suzhou was the pearl in China’s oyster.The night before at the ship talent show, our group sang a round of Frère Jacque, Brother John, morning bells are ringing, adding a verse with the Chinese dynasty lineage as words to this tune. The program would only allow one act per group. Sarah and Karl had offered to sing a duet the Everly Brothers song, Let It Be Me. They were bumped by the Frère Jacque option and didn’t get to sing.In our local guides’ talk she broke into song. One of us responded with a round of the Chinese dynasty lineage. She loved it. She had us all sing it for her. We performed the whole round three times. Then we had Sarah and Karl sing their song and the group sang the chorus along with them.We laughed and laughed. Sharp and our local guide, Yuan Yen, said that we were their best group ever. We were proud of ourselves. Laughing, singing and performing together brought us closer. Our guide, Yuan Yen, (her preferred given name, or her professional name, Kathy), told us something about her background.“I was born in a small village in the north of China on the Yellow River,” she said. “First born of three children. My grandmother was, how you say, thorn in the local communist’s party’s side. She bought products from farmers outside the communist (communal) farm system. She grind her own wheat, bake bread and sell food on road to hungry travelers.“She raise six children. My mother was one of them. I was born in 1981, two years after China begin its one child policy. Mother work as an accountant in the local factory. My father work as a laborer in the factory. Two years after I was born, when my mother pregnant with sister, she had to quit job and disappear. If her pregnancy had been discovered, she would have been forced to abort baby. She had a son two years later. Again she disappear. My grandmother, she take care of me. I spend many weeks without seeing my mother. I remember being taken out into the middle of a cornfield where my mother hid. She explain to me that she play a game of hide and seek and that why she couldn’t come home.“My parents had to pay a fine when they registered the birth of their two children, big fine. My mother could no longer work inside the communist system, because she, how you say, violate one child policy. So, she join her mother in shop selling farm products farmers sneak from the communist farms. She then sold ice cream. Ice cream has big mark up so we could afford the fine. My mother saw I was good with English in school. So she sent me to university in Shanghai. My sister was not so good with school. She good with, how you say, beauty, hair. She own her own cosmetology, is that the word, cosmetology shop. My brother, he join the army. After fifteen years he will move up in army and can get a good job with the government.“When I near to graduate from university my mother consult a marriage arranger. She take my resume with my education, my size, my picture, many things about me, many details. She arranged for me to have blind dates. I had three blind dates. The first I like but he didn’t like me. The second I didn’t like him. The third, my husband, I like so/so and he liked me so/so. We continued to date for two years before we married. He from same village. We not know each other, though we went to same grammar school and the same university in Shanghai. We did not meet until blind date.“I have a six-year-old son now. I don’t get to see my parents much. They live seventeen hours away by car. My parents-in-law help me take care of my son. My husband work as an engineer building tunnels and bridges. It is not like in the states. Engineers don’t make much money.“He’s become a Shanghai man, not like men in the north. He helps with cooking, laundry and cleaning. In Shanghai women look for men with the five C’s, Character, Career, Credit Card, Car and Cook.“In my job I am gone from my son for days. He is very proud that his mother speaks English and is a tour guide. My husband’s father take him to school and pick him up. My mother-in-law take care of him. She want me to have another child, but I’m not so interested.”Frank, one of our group, raised his hand and asked, “Can I ask you a question about another subject?”“Sure,” Yang Yen answered.“Does Jack Ma have much influence with the Chinese government?”“Who is Jack Ma?” she asked.“He is the founder and CEO of Alibaba?” Frank answered.“Oh Alibaba. I know that. On shopping day in China. You know about Chinese shopping day?”“No,” was our shared answer.“It is a lucky day. It is 11/11. All ones. Only good things happen on that day. It is a Chinese holiday. On that day Alibaba sold 94 billion yuan online. Jack Ma. Is that his name? Yes. He very happy that day.”“Sharp do you know Jack Ma?” she asked.“Yes,” Sharp said. “He is the son-in-law of a former Prime Minister. He is one of them, part of the government. The rich government officials use him and Alibaba to launder money.”“Sharp. I will have to talk to you later about that,” Yuan Yen said. Perhaps it was serendipity or perhaps it was synchronicity, but whatever it was, as I packed in Nashville, I looked about for a book to take with me on the trip and quickly, without much thought, I picked up E.O. Wilson’s book Biophilia. I read it on the bus like I was taking a final exam on Wilson’s ideas.The more I read, the more I felt that Wilson was speaking directly to me and my quest. Remember I am in China to study the notion of awe mystery and wonder through the Chinese philosophy and superstitious approach to life and life’s meaning. I am trying to decipher what I think is a mystical message from the universe that came to me during our trip to Utah in late June.The message came in a sequence of events I described earlier. There was the story of my thirty year old cousins who seemed to me to be lost in Boulder, Colorado Then there was my visit to my family cemetery and conversations with my ancestors, followed by my visit to Robert, who seemed so near his last breath on earth; then there was the Dallas flash flood; the next day’s speeding ticket for Marietta outside Wichita Falls, Texas and the hail storm that pounded us as we approached Santa Fe; the next day’s poor trip planning that kept us on the road for fourteen hours and within that fourteen hours there was our failure to discover the magic Peter Hessler found in Nucla, Colorado; then there were the twists and turns through the hoodos of Capital Reef and the passing by the cows next to the road, missing hitting the deer and hitting the skunk and her pups; ending in our climb through the slot canyon in Escalante, Utah and our sublime meal of a lifetime at Escalante Outfitters Café.What did all this mean? Can China unravel this puzzle and deliver me a cosmic message. If my China quest into the mystical works to solve my puzzle, then God must be. By God I don’t mean a man on the throne sitting and reigning in heaven. I simply mean there must be an order in the universe that is not random in which humans, animals and nature participate, some organizing principle that creates a meaning to existence. If there is such a thing, then that is what I call God and it is that organizing principle that I wish to worship.And I am testing this principle on this trip to see if it somehow speaks to me. Theoretical physicists near Geneva, Switzerland conducted an experiment in I think 2013, with the nuclear collider there. They burst an atom into pieces. Some predicted that the atom would have say 20 parts and if it had only twenty parts, to them, this meant that the universe had a predictable mathematical order, implying that there might be some organizing principle to life. Others predicted 80 parts and if it had eighty parts, this meant, to them, that the universe was completely random, chaotic and unknowable, implying that life is an accident and there is no God. In my apocryphal version of this experiment, they counted forty parts.The results didn’t make a case for an ordered universe or for a completely disordered world.The Chinese seem to have an interesting version of God. There is no God as westerners think of God. There is nature, The Great Nature and some small gods that are part of The Great Nature. These gods represent aspects of nature like the ocean, the wind, time, the sun, etc. But they really represent values. The god of time helps us understand that time is relative to the person and the species. What is a long time to a child, is a short time to an old person. Each god teaches a lesson. It is the lesson that the god represents. To worship the god, one really worships the value it represents.This make sense to me. I too want to worship compassion, respect for life, integrity, accountability, social justice and equality of opportunity. Though I am a Christian, I don’t worship Jesus. I worship his ideas, which have a lot in common with Buddhism and Confucianism.This is where I am now in my quest. It is 4:48 A.M. I sit here writing, awake in Los Angeles hotel in a bathroom on a commode, waiting for Marietta to wake up so we can begin the last leg of our trip home.I had been trying to stay asleep until the sun rose in L.A. hoping to re-establish my biological clock so that I can return to work tomorrow recovered from jet lag.As I laid trying to sleep, my mind whizzed in thought. I recalled the story of Marty and her mother and father. They told me only a few facts about themselves and their son, that Sarah and Karl were hardworking second generation Koreans; that Marty divorced a year ago; that their son lived extravagantly, still on their dime. The rest I made up.In the middle of our tour I told Karl that I had written a story using the facts about his family that I had learned from them. I asked him if wanted to read it. He said maybe on the last day of the trip. I sensed that he didn’t want to read it and find himself angry at my intrusion into his family and have to spend the rest of the tour with me at his table. A wise choice, I thought.On the last day, as we waited with our bags to board the bus to the airport, he sought me out and asked if I would read my story to him. I did.When I finished reading, I looked up at Karl and he was taking off his glasses and wiping away tears.“You wrote words, words we have spoken, just as if you were there,” he said. “I couldn’t tell the truth from fiction. How did you do that?”Exactly how did I do that? And how far might I go predicting the future of these two parents and their adult children. I saw Marty’s leather backpack when we got off the bus to enter the airport. Its back was embroidered to look like a cat’s face.So here we have a thirty year old with a backpack like a twelve year old girl and a son in a Peter Pan universe in which his parents support his excessive lifestyle. These two parents are only doing what their parents did for them, give their children all they had to give. But Sarah and Karl’s parents didn’t have so much to give.Now, you, as a reader, can imagine with me the rest of the story. How much is it like other second generation children trying to find their way in two worlds? Can you understand why Susan, the mother, said she would like to go to Korea and live there for a couple of years?Does she yearn for the life in Korea, where it worked well for generations to love your children giving all you have to give? But for her, she may think that it hadn’t work for her as a parent and she didn’t understand what happened. She had followed the family script. But her children did not have her family’s values.I could go on and predict further and so might you. And the closer we are to the present the more accurate our predictions would be.How can we know these things about one another? Often after my first session with a family, I will make guesses about their past and current situation and they will be amazed at how well I know them. It is a fortune teller’s parlor trick. I am not that wise. I have just read from the script of human existence, my own personal pain, our universal nine basic emotions and how they work and I come up with their version of the human story.Why in my writer’s class can my fellow writers say to the writer that we have just read and are critiquing the following:“That doesn’t ring true.”“But it is true,” the writer often replies.And our teacher, Darnell Arnoult and the other more sophisticated writers in our class will look around at one another, knowing what Darnell is about to say.“It doesn’t matter if it really happened that way or not,” she says. “What matters is that it doesn’t work well in the story. Readers won’t believe it. You have not created enough of a context in the story for a reader to believe it or suspend their disbelief and fall into your trance.”How can any of us say of fiction, that it is true? Yet when we have read a good book, we believe it is true.It is because we all participate in the human drama. We all know how it makes us feel to read a story, because inside us we have that same story. How do I know my client’s experiences before they have shared them with me?I know because, their story is my story and the story of all of us. There is some order to the universe and to our lives that we all share. This is what E.O. Wilson said about art and science. He said that art and science work on the same thing, the discovery of the truth. Art searches for meaningful universal truth in human existence. Science searches for truth in nature. Both truths inform one another. Nature provides the context for human existence and we cannot understand human beings and how they think and behave unless we understand the context.For Wilson there is such a thing as the truth and it is not relative like post-modern philosophers believe. Post modernists quote Foucault and cite the physic’s experiments which demonstrate, that from one perspective, matter is a solid particle and from another perspective, matter it is a wave of energy. Post modernists believe that truth is defined by a person and is adapted to a person’s needs and desires. So they conclude that there are multiple truths and never one absolute truth or if there is, only God knows what that Truth is.Wilson believes there is absolute truth and that it is our privilege to be able to search for its discovery. We have intelligent brains and the scientific method as one of our tools for exploring the truth. The problem (or blessing) with the scientific method is that once it discovers a part of the truth, each discovery creates tens or thousands of more questions about the truth. So rather than our search leading to the discovery of The Truth, it leads us to an ever expanding truth that will always lead us to more unknowns. The more of the truth we know, the more we find we don’t know.Some believe the same is true about art. Artists search for human truth and as they discover one version of it, other questions are raised and new art explores those questions and sometimes art finds an answer that is the truth only to have that answer create more questions and more to explore about the truth of the human condition.I appreciate Wilson’s description of the truth, because I too believe that we can form a consensus around what is and that people are able to be honest with themselves and others. Truth is not just relative. It is also absolute. And in this quest, I have found my truth about God, superstition and mystery expanding rather than contracting. Wilson understands that truth as a proposition, once properly understood, contains its opposite.Thank you Wilson for adding to my certainty and at the same time expanding my confusion.With Wilson’s understanding of Truth as the foundational philosophy of my inquiry into mystery, superstition and wonder, I am now ready to attempt to solve the riddle I posed for myself at the beginning of this essay.I had hoped that the I-Ching would work for me to help me understand and appreciate the challenge that each day presented to me in China. Basically, I found the I-Ching to be unhelpful and only accidentally accurate. A clock stuck on 12:00 is right twice a day. The I-Ching was a disappointment.In this book the Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler told the story of the Emperor who consulted the I-Ching about going to war. He interpreted the I-Ching’s answer to his question to mean that he should fight rather than negotiate a peace. He did and he and his army were slaughtered. That was it for me and the I-Ching.Now to the riddle. Are the events that happened to us traveling to Utah in June giving me a cosmic message or are they simply the happenstance of random events?The Chinese taught me something about superstition and it is that it is easy to corrupt God’s cosmic messages (if there are cosmic messages) for our own purposes; Chinese emperors from the first dynasty through Mao did this.Today the Chinese economy is made up of over 50% of what are termed SOE’s or State Owned Enterprises. The parks, the hotels, the museums, the cloisonné factory and the pearl farm store, the silk factory store and the clay warrior facsimile store all had more employees than any well run business should. The government uses their businesses to keep people employed. They corrupt the capitalist model of business efficiency in order to serve another purpose, i.e., that of keeping its people busy. The ship that floated us down the Yangtze, owned by an SOE also had more employees than it needed.For thousands of years the Chinese currency has been counterfeited. Remember the saying “The Americans are the creators, the Japanese are the makers and the Chinese are the imitators.” The Chinese can copy anything. They have an eye of how things look. This presents a problem for merchants in China. Every local vendor, when paid in cash, held the money up to the light to see if it was counterfeit. There is a flood of counterfeit money in China, both Chinese Yuan’s and American dollars in China, another example of the problem of Chinese corruption.China has always struggled with corruption. This was Chang Kia Shak’s problem. It is now the main complaint against the current economy and government. It is what Confucius warned against centuries ago.I think that the Chinese, who are superstitious, may also have trouble with boundaries. They may wish to be able to move beyond our human boundaries and know what only the gods can know and we humans cannot. This trouble with boundaries may also extend to copyrights and patents for which they have little respect. It may also extend to family and to the choice of who their son or daughter marries. This issue of moving beyond boundaries has good and bad implications for China as a nation, I think. Who knows how this issue will empower or impede China’s future?This makes me think that superstition and corruption may be related. It is easy to use superstition for one’s own purposes. If chance plays such a role and one can know the will of the God’s in advance, why not try to use one’s power for one’s own purposes? Or why not try to fool people into following a path that their superstition tells them is God’s way.In my second marriage I watched as my, then wife, used astrology, the I-Ching and psychics to reinforce her already formed feelings. She had been especially enamored with psychics like Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts. Jane Roberts wrote a book, Seth Speaks, in which she channeled a spirit from past centuries named Seth. My ex-wife was intoxicated by Seth and she insisted that I read Seth Speaks. Eventually, I did and when I shared with my wife the part where Seth said married couples should have regular sex, two to three times a week at least, she lost complete interest in Seth.Superstitions lend themselves to corruption and manipulation. We can to easily use them to reinforce what we wish were true and use them, as if we could know God’s will or speak for God. We can use selective perception and confirmation bias to select out of life events, the metaphors and symbols that serve us to confirm our already held beliefs.Remember, Jung suggested that superstition, like the use of an oracle like the I-Ching, can free us from the rigidity of our logical reductionistic thinking. It can break that mold and open us to new perspectives. Yes, perhaps, but I-Ching readings can also be corrupted for our own selfish purposes. We can selectively pick from the I-Ching (or other random accidental events) messages that we attribute to Nature or God and create a false authority that serves our unclaimed preconceptions. While we can appear to be open and curious, we are actually unaware of what we think and feel and we uncover our prejudices and preconceptions in our “random” “magical” messages and we empower ourselves as prophets speaking God’s truth, when we are using metaphysics to manipulate others and build a false reality.I would rather have the scientific method with all its problems. Thank you very much.So what did these events of late June 2015 have to say to me? A lot actually. The Lost Boy’s story confronted me with how quick I am to judge and how little information I need before I develop a theory from facts that confirm my biases. These boys in Colorado may have found themselves there and may not be lost at all. So who is lost? I am. Are they broken? Yes, but so am I.As to my conversation with my deceased family members, I learned how much I need to continue talking to them, how helpful I feel it is to have them as a frame of reference.My sick friend, who appeared to me to be dying, told me something that I want to deny, that I need to face and that is that we are all dying and that I, at sixty-nine, can’t be far behind him.The torrential rainfall in Dallas and the hail storm outside of Santa Fe reminded me of how powerless I am in the face of Nature. Perhaps I needed a double dose of humility. One was not enough to blunt my narcissism. Oh and the message from the woman sheriff was to slow down.The long, long travel day from Santa Fe to Escalante through Nucla taught me that I create my own misery with my poor planning. And the deer, skunks and cattle seem now to me to be just what happens to travelers on Utah Scenic Highway 12. The Hoodos of Capital Reef State Park weren’t ghosts, but they were images upon which I projected my fears.The slot canyon journey into the earth taught me that we needed a guide when we are in unfamiliar territory. The amazing meal after we left the slot canyons was just that, an amazing meal and did not have the holy significance of the last supper and that having no expectations delights.Oh and Nucla. Nucla, Colorado taught me that a great writer like Peter Hessler can find magnificent beauty in the mundane, but the mundane is still the mundane and high expectation often disappoint (a la Buddha).So yes, there were important messages being sent, but I did not find a mystical thread that wove a consistent theme strong enough to be a message from God to me.In my trip to China I learned again that where ever I go, I am still there and that it is the people that I meet and the relationships I form that give me the most meaning.When we returned to our homes in the U.S. and Canada, our table 15, group of nine, exchanged photos on the internet. It became clear that Rita, John, Tim and Karl used photographs to reflect their pilgrimage, much as I used words.I expect that they wonder who in the world might be interested in their images and memories that are so meaningful to them, just as I wonder who will ever read these words. Yet, I am compelled to write and they seem compelled to take and post their pictures.So what do I conclude? It seems that I have made a case that God doesn’t exist and that mystery and wonder are silly superstitions.But was it an accident that I grabbed E.O. Wilson’s book that I read as I traveled in China? Was it an accident that I sat at a table with over half of its diners were oriental? Was it an accident I had such a candid and honest tour guide? Was it an accident that I was studying mystery and wonder, as I floated beneath the foggy mountains on the Yangtze? Was it an accident that Debbie joined me and Sharp in our discussion on religion and I got to hear her story of the painting of her father and the empty drawer?What I concluded for myself was this. I am not a very good instrument through which God speaks. Don’t ever trust me if you hear me saying that I-Ching told me this or that. Don’t ask me what message God is sending. Knowing me as I do, I will distort God’s so called message to suit myself.That doesn’t mean to me that God doesn’t exist or that God doesn’t speak to us. It means I can’t be sure how or if God speaks to me, but I can’t be sure God doesn’t and that I just don’t know how to listen.I am not dismissing wonder or mystery. E.O. Wilson taught me that learning the truth only creates more wonders and more mystery. The universe of reality is constantly expanding and only fools believe they know the whole truth because truth expands with the universe and it is our privilege to explore this truth and to constantly learn and grow. EpilogueIn February of 2016, I attended another NPI workshop similar to the one I mentioned earlier, where I learned about Buddhist philosophy.  One segment of the workshop focused on dreams and it was by my ex-wife of the Seth Speaks story I told earlier.  She is an excellent therapist and an experienced expert at helping people discover spiritual messages in their dreams.With about 20 people in a circle, she worked her magic again and all of us in the small group were able to decipher some meaningful message from our dreams. After being immersed in the atmosphere of mystical metaphysical alchemy that she created, I began to reflect on my Utah trip puzzle.And it came to me. Of course, it was about the last portion of my life, my march to the River Styx.  I, like my mystical (not necessarily real) lost boy cousins, I feel lost. I wonder often, what might my life’s purpose be now, now that I have the money to retire and feel the push from my younger colleagues to let go of my place and give it up to them. I’ve lost my drive and ambition that once gave me a sense of direction. I don’t want to be famous anymore or to have the guilt and obligations of the uber-rich. I’m well enough off. But I’m not completely physically well. My back aches. I pee every hour and a half. I’ve lost my throwing arm. I can’t remember names. (But I never could). I know I’m slipping. I wonder when I should give up pretending I can help and when I must be the one asking for help. I see this in my future, but I don’t know when or where. This frightens me.The mythical image of the lost boys in my mind reaches this part of my insecurity.The visit to the cemetery was an awkward time. I feel guilty about surviving. I long to connect, but I don’t know to what or to whom. I see these graves of dead ancestors and I feel a chill coming over me, knowing I will be dust and ashes or worm-food soon enough.I know this is good medicine. Making peace with death, feeling it sitting on my left shoulder, can make the rest of my life more meaningful and precious.Then, Robert, my dying friend (who, by the way, eight months later is still alive and talking) showed me what one path to the river looks like. That might be me sooner than later. It is him now and I’m sad for him and sad to lose him, yet loss will be the mark of this part of my life.The storms, torrential rains in Dallas and rain and hail in New Mexico, those are in my aging path. Fear, feeling attacked. This could be cancer or pneumonia, for me or Marietta. Surely age will bring this same fear to us. Yet, the spiritual point is that the rain and hail are really of little consequence.The speeding ticket is the warning that because we are aging, we must slow down.The trip to Nucla tells us not to over-do or over-reach, that finding beauty in the desert is a refined skill and it must be cultivated. Finding beauty in aging might require a certain skill as well.The extremely frightening roller-coaster ride on Scenic Highway 12 may be how the descent toward death will feel, with monsters (herds of deer, cows next to the road and skunks in our way) next to our path. But though, again, we probably can’t help but be frightened, the monsters are of no consequence. And then there is the ending part of the journey, when we are alive but underground (beneath our once highly functioning selves) where we found beauty and challenges, where we needed help from a guide. And then the last moment, when our journey ended and we began a new journey home. Death, could that be the last meal on our trip, the amazing bread on our table, the beautiful trout, the rhubarb strawberry pie alamode. Will this be what death is really like?I’m amazed. I found an answer to my puzzle. It came from the most unlikely place, not from China as I expected, but from metaphysical, mystical trance that my mythical Medusa ex-wife created for me. What a surprise. But it feels exactly right to me.    

Hrumph Traveling Again: This Time to France

Intro

Like our trip to Italy, Isabelle and Christian, our Paris friends, were going to play a prominent role in our vacation. We were traveling to Marseille in France and would recover there from our jet lag for two days. Then our plan was to meet Isabelle and Christian in Buis-les-Baronnie at a rented villa in the Luberon Mountains with a view of Mont Ventoux.Isabelle and Christian spent two years in Nashville while Christian was completing a fellowship in Cardiology. Isabelle was trained as a psychologist in France. While in the U. S. she attended to her children, Thomas then 6 and Charlotte then age 2 ½. I hooked up with her by a request from Hans Strupp, who she sought out when she arrived in Nashville. I invited her to be a member of our peer support group and to supervise me on a case. During her time in Nashville, we met weekly. She observed my work through a one-way mirror with permission of the patient, and then we talked over lunch. We had both Christian and Isabelle over for dinner.We were excited to see them again, because of our previous connections, because of their kindness to us on our last trip and because we were so eager for the refuge of their company in a foreign land. Isabelle had a similar excitement about travel and new experiences as Marietta’s. Christian had a similar notion to mine that everywhere you are, you are still there. To Christian and me, this means we reserve the right to complain. Neither of us alone is a match for our wives high moral ground, but together we make a formidable team. My seeming composure was not without complications. As the time approached for us to fly to France, I was aware of a gloom descending over me. This feeling seemed familiar to me. It had many of the hallmarks of the dread I felt before our last foreign trip.I could recognize it in myself and I could recognize it in others. I was returning to Nashville from a psychology conference. A sixty something year old couple was in the security line with me. In line the husband was separated from the wife by about six people, “Come up here,” he said to her.  “How did you get back there? Why weren’t you right behind me? You never follow me like you are supposed to.”“I’m fine back here,” she replied. “You always rush off. I can’t keep up with you.”“Okay. I will come back with you,” he said.As he passed by me, I observed to him, “You must be traveling abroad.”“How did you know?” he asked.“My wife and I have that same argument when we are traveling overseas. There is something about leaving the country that makes me nervous.”“Oh we’re not nervous,” he said.“Oh you’re not?” his wife replied. “Why did you wake me up at five this morning to ask me if we had a rental car? How many times have you asked me to show you our tickets and passports? How many times have you asked me when we were coming back?”Yes, they had all the signs. The dread began to emerge in me one week before the takeoff. I called Marietta at the office. Lisa, her court officer answered, “You sound depressed David,” Lisa observed.“I suppose I am,” I replied, surprising myself with my frank self-disclosure.When Marietta got home that summer evening she joined me sitting on the front porch. “Lisa said you were depressed?” Marietta said with apparent interest in my reply.“Well I guess I am.”That was a significant difference from last time. Last time my fear and sadness at leaving was covered with anger, denial, innocence and heroism. I was the wonderful indulgent husband, who was suffering a trip to Italy out of my great love for my wife. She, of course, was expected to be grateful for my sacrifice and adore me for my willingness to endure this ordeal. If she didn’t my anger and irritability were at the ready to remind her how lucky she was to have a great hero like me, sacrificing for her pleasure and happiness.This time I knew I couldn’t get away with this posture, though I would have liked to. I was reduced to the naked truth.Yes, I was depressed.“Why,” Marietta asked.“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because our house is being remodeled and we don’t have running water in the kitchen. Dust covers everything. I have a cough from all the sawdust and powder from the laid and sanded wallboard mud. The roof leaks. For the last week and a half the contractor has been promising that the roofer, the plumber and the electrician would be here tomorrow. I count on it every time he says they will come. Each time they don’t I get disappointed. Perhaps those disappointments stack up. I don’t know.”And then I spoke the words Marietta did not want to hear, but suspected. “Then there is the trip.”“What about the trip? I thought you were excited this time?”“Well I am. I want to see the Tour de France route. That would be fun. I want to see Isabelle, Christian and Charlotte. But we don’t speak the language. How are we going to even rent a car or find the hotel? I know you have learned some French in the past three months, but last week we went to see that French movie, LaAuberge Espanol and we didn’t understand a word of French, either one of us. We were completely dependent on the subtitles. French was the only course I flunked in college. You, you are good at languages. You’ve been studying French everyday for three months. And you didn’t understand a word. I hate being so dependent and stupid. We will always be playing Blanche Dubois, dependent on the kindness of strangers, dependent dan les largesse de’etranger. Maybe I can remember a word or two and speak un peu, but I can’t comprenda un mot of French they say to me.”On Monday Marietta called me at work. “What’s the contractor’s number? I’m going to call him and give him a piece of my mind.”I gave her the number.She called back in a few minutes. “I really let him have it. I asked him if he had ever lived through a remodeling project, living in the house, while the work was going on around him. He said, ‘no.’ I told him it wasn’t easy and that my husband was getting depressed because of it and I won’t have that. He had better get those electricians and plumbers over there tomorrow.”And sure enough they came. The contractor claimed they had promised to come anyway, but they had been promising that for some time before “Judge Shipley” called.Though I was not particularly happy about playing the role of the damsel in distress and giving up the white house to Marietta, I was glad it worked. It was sort of like being stuck holding my wife’s purse and your young nephew asks you to pay for their ice cream they just bought and you discover money in her purse.I knew why she called the contractor. She couldn’t do anything about my depression and fear that was attached to the trip, but she could do something about the contractor. And she was terrified that I might again be reborn as a traveling curmudgeon in France. This was a preemptive strike, a condom intended to prevent and unwanted birth.I appreciated her efforts, but my fears remained. On the day of our departure there were moments of silly panic. “Where are the traveler’s checks? I put them right here on top. Why did you mess with my packing?” or “A friend told me that they hate Americans in Marseilles. They rob you and steal your car if it’s parked in one place for more than thirty minutes. Change our reservations now.”We made it to the airport without much arguing. I began missing my dog, Greco, before we ever left. The roof still leaked and the roofer was supposed to come that day. But we left.My father’s ghost hangs over me as I think about this trip. He was always threatened by foreign travel. As a college student, when I proposed a summer trip to Europe, my mother enthusiastically supported the notion. But the money had to come from my father and it never came. He was a conservative southern lawyer, afraid of the evil communists. I was a liberal college student and he was afraid I would get behind the iron curtain and never return.When he and my mother traveled abroad, he was the epitome of curmudgeonhood. I feel his fear in me. I love being the “go to guy” for people who need my expert help. I love being the master of my world, and in my office I feel that way sometimes. I am dependent on my patient’s dependency just as my father was dependent on his role as a prominent attorney in a small southern town. Pull either of us from these roots and fear emerges.I was optimistic that I had changed and might be spared from the inheritance of my father’s fear. Once at the airport, however, it found me again. Marietta and I were sitting at the gate. “When do we take the jetlag pills and where are the directions for taking them?” I asked.“I forget them. I think I left them in my purse,” she replied.I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was after all Marietta Shipley. Forgetting something, usually many things, on a trip is part of her definition of self. She had already confessed to forgetting the film, camera (she remembered the digital one) and her sunglasses. Those things didn’t bother me, but the jetlag pills. Jetlag was the reason we were going to France for three and a half weeks. It cost a lot of money to get there so we should make the best of it. Reason one. But reason two was we always pay a high price in jetlag both coming and going. I was hoping these jetlag herbal pills would lessen that cost and help us to recover more quickly from the trip. I was counting on it. Those jetlag pills were going to be my magic potion.“You forgot the jetlag pills? How could you forget those,” I said knowing perfectly well how she forgot them. Just like she forgets and leaves her purse in a restaurant, every other time we go out to eat. Just like she forgets to bring home the cups she takes with her in the car every morning to drink her coffee, etc. That’s how she forgot.“I’ve got some herbal pills that my Chinese acupuncture doctor gave me,” was her feeble reply.I don’t want to record the rest of my tantrum. Suffice it to say my father’s spirit lived on in me. This crisis resolved itself when Marietta found the jetlag pills in the St. Louis airport.Hooray for Marietta.Another ingredient that I was depending on for the trip was business class. For two years we spent money on the Citibank American Airlines credit card and we saved all our American frequent flier miles. Remodeling our house with the bank’s money and our credit cards as the intermediary helped. So we had enough miles to go to France in business class. My first time.As soon as I sat in my seat, I felt better. It was wide and the room in front between seats seemed enormous by my Southwest Airlines standards. Just after we sat down a woman offered us a choice of champagne or orange juice. Marietta and I took the orange juice. With the orange juice we took our first of six jetlag pills. As soon as all passengers were in their seats our server returned with four choices of wine and soft drinks. Marietta got a glass of French Bordeaux. I got a sprite remembering that alcohol was not good for jetlag.It was hard to avoid the alcohol though. I took a sip of Marietta’s wine. It was exceptionally good and the server returned several times with an offer to top off her glass.Then there was dinner. The choices were Filet Mignon with roasted red peppers and basil sauce with a potato tort bonded by manchego cheese and tomato with green beans and sliced caramelized onions; Lamb Chops with light oregano red wine jus, the same green beans and onions the same potato tort; Chicken Manchego presented on a bed of basmati rice, artichoke and wilted spinach, with the red pepper sauce that came with the roast beef; Cannelloni filled with cheese and spinach in a light cream tomato sauce. This course was followed by a cheese course of red Leicester cheese and Roquefort cheese with haute cuisine crackers, port and other wines. The dessert was a choice among vanilla ice cream with or without hot fudge or nuts, or butterscotch or seasonal berries or Grand Marnier fruit salad with Hagen-Das Mango Sorbet.These choices were designed for our liking by a panel of famous chefs. The only one we recognized was Alice Waters of Berkeley California’s Chez Paniesse. The wine consultant was Dr. Richard Vine. This seemed appropriate.The wine was better than the food. With excellent service and so much planning the meat tasted over cooked to us and the vegetables under cooked. The main event to business class for us was the extra attention paid to us by the stewards and stewardesses.We were offered the opportunity to purchase from an on board duty-free shop. We were offered our own DVD player with selection of movies. I chose to attempt sleep. Marietta watched the movie offered on the large screen in the front of the plane.What I had once thought to be an extra comfortable large seat suddenly became a very inadequate bed. On the floor in a plastic bag was a fine comfortable pillow and blanket. The chair extended further than normal. The seat had a lumbar support, but was not long enough for me to lie prone. I kept wanting to slide into a puddle. My back lost all support as soon as I turned to one side or another. It was seven-thirty P.M., CST, my Nashville, Tennessee time. It was 1:30 A.M. London time. I wanted to be sleepy but I wasn’t. I was patient. In time I began to relax.The plane was full. In our section of this Boeing 767 there were two seats together separated from two middle seats by aisles. The plane held 226 people. Our section held thirty-six of them, six rows, six people in a row. We sat in row four on the right side of the plane, the south side as we traveled east toward London. In the middle of our row sat a seventy-ish year old couple who choose DVD’s and a selection of movies. The husband obviously chose a comedy, because, as I began to relax into a semi trance almost sleep he would guffaw and I would be forced to begin my meditative journey toward sleep again. This kept happening until about 10:00 PM CST. I think he watched two movies, both comedies. Finally he became quiet. Sleep did come to me, but only for a couple of hours.I was awakened by the servers organizing our breakfast. It consisted of a bowl of milk and cornflakes, ten blueberries and a half of an apricot, a small Dannon strawberry yogurt, a choice of an English muffin or a croissant, a choice of orange or apple juice and a choice of coffee or tea.I grudgingly pushed myself out of my sleep and ate my breakfast and of course took my jet lag pill. Perhaps it was the placebo effect of the pill, but I did seem to be alert enough to face the next stage of the journey.We arrived in Manchester, England, exited the ship that gave us safe passage and special treatment and merged in the masses of airport travelers, losing whatever class distinction we once had. This is what I’m most afraid of, being nobody in a foreign land of long lines. We walked the airport maze, until we found our next queue. That was for security. It had all the same machines. They stopped our carry-on bag and they took out Marietta’s cuticle clippers. “These are my good ones,” Marietta exclaimed. The offered to ship them back to the states for 5 pounds or eight dollars. Marietta accepted their offer. This meant we had to wait for a supervisor and fill out some forms.I was so pleased when I answered Marietta’s question, “Do you mind waiting?” with “No I don’t.”And I meant that. We had three hours to kill here. We might as well spend some moments with the supervisor filling out forms. It wasn’t bad. It took maybe fifteen minutes. We then continued our walk through the maze of hallways looking for signs that said connecting flights next to an arrow that pointed the way. With a long walk and a bus ride to the North Terminal we emerged into the domestic terminal at Gatwick Airport.We knew no one there. No one knew us. We were hoping to blend into the crowd to avoid looking American and slipping past whatever anti-American feeling there would be in France. We wanted to look fresh.I’m not sure we accomplished our goal. I thought I could distinguish among the various nationalities. I don’t know what my cues were. The English men seemed to be wearing sport coats. Americans wore baseball caps. The young French males wore long sleeve cotton knit shirts without a collar. American’s clothes had more color. Young American girls wore pink. Older English women’s hair was blond and held tightly in place with hairspray. The French women wore long-sleeve, white blouses with buttons. They were similar to a man’s dress shirt, but much less ironed. The French men tended to have longer hair. French women often wore long diaphanous over blouses either tan or olive green. The twenty-something British woman wore a white blouse with a pointed collar underneath a long, loose, knit, black v-necked sweater. An oriental man wore a well-ironed, white, cotton short-sleeve, dress shirt with the bright red and gold logo of his golf course in Japan. A young woman with long dark hair and a cotton, knit, off-the-shoulder blouse looked Italian. These guesses are a Rorschach card into my prejudices and stereotypes. I’m not sure how accurate my assumptions were, but we were among these distinguishable travelers and we were falling deep into this crowd, not knowing how we were being perceived.Renting a car was no problem in Marseille. Well not exactly. The machines of renting a car were no different than in the airports in the U.S. The rental agent disturbed us when he gave us a list of do’s and don’ts composed especially for Marseille.Don’t park on the street. Lock the car. Drive with the car doors locked. Car thieves will open your door at a stoplight, force you out of your car and steal it, if your door is not locked. Park in supervised parking areas. Do not leave baggage and purses visible in your car seat or floor. Thieves will break windows to steal whatever they see in your car. The agents verbal instructions were, “I don’t mean to frighten you but drive straight to the hotel and take the bags out of the car first thing and you will be all right.” We got a Renault Scenic, four doors with a hatch back, a version of the Chrysler Neon. We followed the directions into Marseille from the airport. It was about thirty miles away. There were many opportunities to make wrong turns, but with luck and excellent instincts and navigation from Marietta, we made it to the city.Once downtown, the torture began. The streets were poorly marked. We made several wrong turns. As we were recovering from one of those we followed a car that we thought was making a U-turn across an opening in the median. But it wasn’t a median. It was a parking lot with only one exit, the one we came in. We found ourselves boxed in at the bottom of the lot with nothing to do but back out.That was the problem. The car was a stick-shift five speed. The reverse was left and up with a line under the R. I pushed the gear shift over as far left as I could, then up and the car went forward. A flower stand was on our right, cars were parked on the left, straight ahead were steel posts that formed a barrier that was wide enough to let people walk between them, but not wide enough for a car to pass.I pulled up the hand brake so that I couldn’t go forward further and began my experiments to discover reverse. I pushed pulled, jerked, shoved, yelled, did the same in the opposite direction thinking that the diagram was reversed or upside down. All this and the same result – no reverse only forward. Marietta tried. She also failed. Stuck and lost with people about becoming curious. Angry frustrated, frightened we began to consider leaving the car when Marietta discovered two steel posts in front of us on the left just wide-enough apart for us to try to get through. I slowly let the car drift downhill toward the posts on the left. My angle was bad. I waited for the constant flow of the cars in the street to stop before I began my attempt. Just as the cars stopped for the red light pedestrians began to move between my designated posts. One was a woman walking very slowly with crutches. I waited. It was frustrating. I was afraid that as soon as she was safely across the traffic flow would terminate my escape opportunity. Marietta was too. She jumped out of the car and ran into harm’s way. She put out her hand and stopped the traffic. I squeezed the car through the opening. The steel posts on the left nicked the left door. (I was glad I maxed out our insurance coverage.) I didn’t have enough room to turn onto the street. My car edged on to the opposite sidewalk then back into the street. Marietta jumped back in the car and we were off again. Lost but not stuck.When we found the hotel by accident, we drove in front and parked. As I began gathering my wallet from the dash, my sunglasses fell to the floor. I leaned down and discovered a plastic ring below the gearshift knob. I pushed and it went up. That was the key to reverse. Pull up the plastic ring below the gearshift knob, then shift into reverse. I was so excited to discover this that I tried it out three times and went backwards one foot each time.Though neither of us complained of jet lag, we slept that first night from 11:00 PM – 12:30 PM. That’s thirteen and a half hours. The length of sleep was one thing, but the depth of sleep was another. The maid knocked on our door numerous times. She finally got so exasperated with us that she came in spite of our protests, cleaned the bathroom and changed the towels while we slept on.Hotel De VilleThere were the tour buses full of people. We speculated that they were going to the Hotel De Ville. Signs all over town pointed out its direction. In the brochure we read that it was one of three buildings spared by the Germans in that part of town. They blew the rest up because the area was a haven for Jews and the resistance fighters. We wondered if the same thing would happen to these tourists that happened to us. When we arrived at the Hotel De Ville we learned that it was a police station and jail and that it was considered a person’s last stop before execution – “a la l’hotel de ville,” not a hotel. Our speculation about people and what they might be doing was a fun pastime and perhaps because we were not in our roles in Nashville where at restaurants attorneys would discover and fawn over Judge Shipley and my clients might see me or me them and neither of us know the etiquette of what to do outside in the real world. Here we were nobody, creating stories and speculating about what we could not possible know. Here, that was almost everything.When finally we did, slowly, one foot, then thirty seconds later a second foot, roll out of bed we were so stiff we could barely move. I did my full yoga routine and my back still hurt. Marietta, who hates to stretch, did some leg stretches as well to no avail.We were dressed and on our way looking for lunch by 2:45. Marseilles has a beautiful dock area surrounded by restaurants and that’s where we headed. We chose a restaurant on a corner sat down and I used the magic French words that Marietta taught me, “Je voudrais.” In French I ordered a coke for me and a Perrier for over lemon for Marietta and I “je voudraied” the menu. I got a Pepsi, Marietta go her Perrier, but no menu. It was past two and the kitchen would not open again until 6:00 PM.We drank up, paid up and found Le Sufferin two spots down to the left. Le Sufferin advertised full service til after midnight. We found a table. I ordered a ham and cheese omelet, Marietta a ham and cheese sandwich. My omelet was very light and good and Marietta’s sandwich was a notch above the American ham and cheese. The cheese was on the outside of the bread; the bread was toasted and better bread than Bunny Bread.Marietta seemed to be the one fascinated with the opposite sex this trip. There was the Hertz Rental Car attendant, “Movie star handsome.”“Oh,” I said. That’s all I said.“Tall, dark, jet black hair parted in the middle, thin with muscles.”Then there were the waiters at the restaurant.“Oh, isn’t he good looking. They are all good looking.”“Who are you talking about?” I wondered.“The waiters. That one in the crewneck shirt, he is short, but so well built. He looks like a dancer. Gene Kelly in a tight t-shirt. And the others are just as handsome.”“His shirt is not that tight,” I commented defending his decorum.Then on the street the next morning, “Look at him Jack Lalane. That old guy in the muscle shirt. What a flat stomach. David I hope you look that good at seventy-five.”“How do you know he is seventy-five?” I asked.“His body was twenty five,” she responded, “but his face, balding head and gray hair and hands, they were old.”“You really checked him out,” I said.“It was that tight shirt, big muscles and flat stomach that caught my attention first.”The weather here this year, 2003, is the hottest summer in France since 1976. For the last several days the temperature has been reported as 32° centigrade. In Fahrenheit Marietta tells me you multiply the centigrade temperature X 2 and add 30° to that number and you get the equivalent temperature in Fahrenheit degrees. That would be 32 X 2 = 64 + 30 = 94°.But I swear it is not anything like 94° in Nashville. The Nashville humidity magnifies temperature effects. My friend and contractor Mark Meinhart tells me Nashville is nothing compared to Houston. He lived there for forty years before he moved to Nashville. Just after he moved to Nashville Mark took his wife and family to play miniature golf. He saw something there when we looked at the lights that was remarkable. He pointed to the lights and called to his wife to look at them. She responded immediately, “no bugs.”“No,” meaning not any bugs could not have been an accurate observation, but perhaps there were much less bugs or a less dense swarm of bugs in Nashville then there was in Houston. Well in Marseilles, which is on the Mediterranean Sea, I wasn’t sweating in 96° heat. By 6:00 or 7:00 P.M. the air was very comfortable. The French complained about being uncomfortable in the heat, but like Mark in his reference to us about Houston, the French don’t know from heat discomfort. Nashville beats Marseilles and all of France for heat and humidity discomfort, according to the French we spoke with, by a country kilometer and Houston apparently beats France by a country mile according to Mark.The direct sun is hot in France and, for that, the houses and apartments have shutters. The apartment shutters pull down and roll up like the mechanism in a roll-top desk. In homes often the shutters are made of plastic with metal struts. They fold out in sections so that air can come in without letting in much light. A metal flange folds out to lock the shutters open, so that the wind can’t blow them shut.As I imagined, it is awkward trying to communicate without knowing the language. When I parked in the hotel garage in Marseille, I lost the ticket that stuck out like a tongue when I pushed the red button as I entered the garage. The hotel concierge called the garage attendant as we were leaving to tell him to let us out. As I listened to this conversation, I heard him say, “Parlez-vous l'anglais.” I said to him “deux jours” so that we would be charged for only our 2 day stay. He replied, “une jour” or one day. Clearly telling me to lie, so I will have to pay less.I remembered “perdu” or lost and “billet” for ticket. So I thought maybe I could swing it. We found our car and headed for the sortie (exit). When we got to the exit, a man motioned us to an exit. I shouted, “perdu billet.” He came over and said something, actually a lot of something. He motioned me out of the car. I asked Marietta if she would negotiate the ticket problem, while I stayed with our car full of luggage. I had forgotten to tell her about the “une jour.” Shortly she returned.“He told me to say twelve hours,” she said. “I told him we were her for two days, but he said twelve hours. He talked to his boss. He said twelve hours. That saved us twelve dollars. I offered him a tip of two Euros. He seemed insulted. I didn’t mean to insult him. He told me that in France this was ‘pas necessaire.’ But he took the two Euros.”Later, after we joined Christian and Isabelle, Christian explained, “the French consider work as a privilege. Service workers are well paid. Tips are not expected in restaurants. The welfare system in France is so good that work is done as a matter of pride, as much as for money. Peut etre, it was an insult to offer this homme a tip.” Not only did we not understand the language we couldn’t understand the difference between when we were being generous and when we were being insulting. When in Marseilles we merged into the crowds, as I had feared. The specter of losing one’s identity with so little competence was worse than the actual pain of it. As we walked along the streets, we were obviously tourists. We had a map and were constantly referring to it, looking around for street signs and arguing over where we were. This made us an easy mark for thieves we were told, but we were perdu (lost). What else could we do? We weren’t the only tourists, however. The other tourists were usually English or German. We were some of the few Americans.Anyway back to merging with the masses. I knew I had crossed an important threshold, when, on our last morning in Marseilles we sat by the dock in an outdoor restaurant and had petit dejeuner (or breakfast). As we ate our croissants and jam, we were completely inconspicuous and we could observe and comment on fellow restaurant patrons and the hundreds of passersby on the street, which we did. There was the man drinking a beer at 9:30 A.M., shirt unbuttoned. He was short of breath and was smoking. We wondered if he was long for this world. There were two young women parking their motor scooter. They had tattoos on their left shoulders. One had a nose ring. They were soon to become our servers.We left Marseilles safe and recovered from jetlag. We found ourselves traveling on the correct A-road toward Avignon. In France the A-roads are their interstates. N-roads are very good highways. D-roads are the smaller less traveled roads that are often not on the map. We stayed on the A-road for only as long as we had to, because Isabelle suggested a “route more scenic would be to exit the A-roads and move forward on the N-roads.” The A-road we took at 12:00 noon on July 12 was not very crowded. Our car had an engine this time instead of the one with a rubberband for an engine that I had last time. I drove about 120 km per hour which I guessed was about 70 mph and I was going just a bit faster than the traffic in the right lanes, but I was often passed by cars going faster. Traffic here didn’t have the racecar feel of the Italian autostrada.We exited to go to Gorda, a diversion recommended by Isabelle. The road was a windy N-road, taking us through a dry countryside reminiscent of Southern California. The drive was beautiful. Gorda was a small ancient village, built on the edges and sides of a U-shaped canyon with a gorgeous view of the surrounding territory. It was difficult to imagine why people would decide to build on the edge and sides of a cliff. This town was laid out using the walls of cliffs as the backs of buildings and the cliff ledges for roofs, much as the Navajo Indian cliff dwellings were designed.As we drove around a curve we spotted an outdoor restaurant hanging on the edge of a cliff. We stopped there. It was an exclusive hotel. It cost about three hundred dollars a night to stay there. The server sat us under an umbrella at a table that overlooked the canyon. The menu had two sections. One called “Entre” and other termed “la Plate.” The entre’s were melons and prosciutto, and various appetizer looking items. Le Plate contained dishes that looked more like a meal. We decided to order one entre and one la Plate to split. We ordered melon and prosciutto and duck rare and mashes pomme de terre (potatoes). As soon as our entre arrived we knew something was lost in translation. We got two melons and prosciutto that were plenty food for a lunch. We knew that meant we were getting two la Plats as well. “Garcon,” I spoke as soon as I realized this, surprising Marietta with my confidence. The server came over and understood my English and hand motions for splitting and soon brought us each a half serving of duck and mashed potatoes. The rare duck was “délicieux” in a cherry sauce with a small mound of cooked tarte yet, sweet cherries. The mashed potatoes were light clouds of whipped potatoes seasoned with just the right amount of salt. We ordered a boutille d’eau (bottle of water). We got a beautiful blue bottle with about sixteen ounces of water. We ordered another one not really understanding that each bottle was $6.50 and that the tap water, which they are obligated to bring us if asked, would have been fine. Our lunch was pleasant but paying $13.00 for Wattwiller water in an elegant bottle was one of our many blunders. Since the bottle was “so lovely,” we took it with us. We had surely paid for it.We drove on to our destination, Isabelle and Christian at un villa in Buis-les-Barronies.Pain CompagneThe drive included many D-roads and several wrong turns with fairly quick recovery and only a modicum of loud voices. The scenery was beautiful as Isabelle foretold, but we hadn’t seen the lavender fields Isabelle had promised.We arrived at our villa at about 4:30 P.M. We greeted Isabelle and Christian. They are Parisians and Peter Maille in his book A Year in Provence said that in Paris the greeting is one kiss on each cheek.  We greeted one another as Parisians do. Our villa was one half of a duplex, one story with a loft. We had our choice of a downstairs bedroom and bath or an upstairs bedroom and bath. We choose upstairs. We got settled in our room and were off to meet Charlotte (Isabelle and Christian’s 20-year-old daughter) and her friends who by chance were staying in the same village for vacation in a house nearby. Charlotte attends college in Reims. She will study in Boston for a year and a half at Northeastern University in an exchange program with Cesem, the University in Reims.It seems Charlotte has a boyfriend, Vincent, with whom she is living (as of last month); Vincent’s best friend from childhood is Guilliam who is dating Delphine. Delphine’s parents live in Buis-les-Baronnies. Her mother is the only nurse at the local hospital. She is divorced and dating a neighbor. We were invited for a drink and some hors d’oeuvre.As we arrive, Charlotte came out to meet us. There had been a wreck on the A-road from Paris. The road had been closed for hours. The Tour de France was traveling through Lyon. Charlotte’s party had to travel all night. They arrived at 8:00 A.M. and slept until 5:00 P.M. by the swimming pool attached to the house.Charlotte and her parents were clearly glad to see one another. And we were glad to see Charlotte again. Ah Charlotte, the beautiful talented sixteen-year-old who sang, The Rose, a cappella for us four years prior, was even more beautiful than before. Her eyes were bright, alive, and happy. Her enthusiastic spirit was the same as it was with a dash of maturity and sophistication added.I was smitten once again. Who was this Vincent, I wondered in my Archie Bunker protective voice. I can only imagine Christian’s struggle to let his daughter go.We were introduced to Vincent, Guilliam, Delphine, Delphine’s mother and boyfriend, two other girls Charlotte’s age and one other boyfriend. We caught up with Charlotte who kindly tended to us in English, while the conversation around us was French. Marietta was able to be a part of the French conversation. I was completely lost, unless someone was speaking English.The house was small. I’m not sure how all these people could sleep inside. In fact, I imagined that some would sleep outside. The swimming pool was about twenty by ten with the water streaming out of one end and pouring over the end, as if it flowed from the pool down the mountain. It was framed on three sides by a stone walk. On the unframed end the water poured into a collection area below. This allowed for leaves to flow out of the pool and made the pool easier to clean and the water was constantly being pumped through a filter system.The visit with Charlotte was much too short. One thing of note was Vincent and Guilliam’s apologetic comment for one of the girls we met, who had purple and pink spiked hair various piercings and tattoos. Imagining how she must look to us they described her as “une victime de la mod.” In English this means “fashion victim.” In contrast to her, these young people had no piercings, no tattoos, and their hair was natural, and conventionally cut.We drove from there to a local restaurant, where we had a beautiful presented and délicieux dinner. I had something akin to chicken that was not chicken, not quail, not pheasant, and not duck. I know because I asked, but I never understood what it was. Marietta and Isabelle had a fish that turned out to be trout served and deboned by two beautiful charming waitresses, supervised by the hostess – owner and chef, whom we imagined to be one of their mothers.Exhausted, we returned home about 11:00 PM to our bedroom, our stifling hot, no breeze at all bedroom. I had enough alcohol to drink that I fell asleep in a drunken stupor. Marietta was not so lucky. I woke in a couple of hours in a sweat, unable to return to sleep. With the help of Benadryl, I finally found sleep again. The breeze began at about 6:00 A.M. We slept until 10:00 A.M.Near this area around Nyons, there is a local legend about the breeze (le ventre). It always blows the same time daily. In 600 A.D. St. Césani d’ Arleo came to visit his cloistered nun sister (souer) in her convent de Saint Pierre. The heat was so stifling that her brother (son frere) went to the south coast of France to the Mediterranean Sea and brought back with him the breeze from the sea. He put it inside the ground near her convent. Every day in the summer the wind pours out of the hole “se tro” of Pantris at 10:00 P.M. until morning. In the winter it blows from 6:00 in the morning until 9:00 A.M.At breakfast (or petit dejeuner) Christian shared with us an important part of his French heritage. As we lingered over our yogurt, bread, jam and coffee, talking for more than an hour, Christian told us what his father told him, (and he perhaps was told this by his father). That is “you never get older sitting at the dinner table.” Comment dir on: “on ne vicillit pas ā table.”The weather reports keep getting worse. When we arrived this was the hottest period on record in France since 1976. Now Christian tells us that reports are that it is the hottest, driest, period on record, ever.Coming from the U. S., we are aware of having the coolest and wettest spring in a long time. Summer which usually comes in late May for us in Tennessee did not really come until July 1^st. It occurred to us that Tennessee had somehow stolen France’s normal weather.After eating our long petit dejeuner we lounged about the house, staying in the shade, shutting the windows exposed to the direct sun, happy for the breeze that blew through the house, blowing around papers and napkins. The breeze made the heat just bearable.Late in the day Isabelle proposed a ride in our window-shut, air-conditioned rental car to search for lavender fields. Christian stayed behind. He had two weeks of the Le Monde and some left over magazine that he wanted to read. Christian said, “I enjoy reading Le Monde. It presents material with the pros and cons around each issue. When reporting this way it does not comment. When it does, it often offers a third view. I like to read it and form my own opinion and I get the fact news from TV.”Just then on television came a news report about the high unemployment figures in the U.S. and how difficult it was for hungry, poor, U.S. citizens in need to get food. The program showed charitable organizations handing out food and running out of fresh vegetables.“The French press likes to demonstrate the failures of your social net and implicitly contrast the success of the French system. And I agree,” Christian said. “Perhaps our system is too indulgent and rewards not working while yours is too indifferent to the poor. The poor will hate the rich, if not taken care of. That is one of the reasons for the difference in the murder rate of our two countries. I agree that work is a privilege and it is my responsibility to help take care of those who don’t work. I just think we need to tinker with the level of tax and the amount of help a bit better in France.”Clearly the news and public events were important to Christian. He took his citizenship seriously and was happy with France’s position on wishing to wait for the atomic inspectors in Iraq to finish their job before war was considered, a position to which I was sympathetic as well.In France the Iraq war was a major issue along with genetic engineered foods. I saw a slogan on the back of T-shirt in Marseille that said, “America knows no limits,” written in English. Some French seem to believe that having limits and opponents to challenge ones ideas is a good thing and that the attitude of the U.S. to go it alone is arrogant and imperious and will come back to bite us in the butt. Perhaps they have a point.Isabelle, Marietta and I piled into the hot car and were off on our lavender quest. Reports were that the heat and drought had impacted the flowers. The purple lavender’s weren’t so purple and the smell of lavender perfume in the fields was hardly detectable. We drove east from Buis-les-Barronies up small mountains roads, following a river into the bowels of the Barronies Mountains.  Soon we spotted lavender fields and saw a tractor and two men with rakes working the lavender in the fields. Marietta and Isabelle got out to take pictures. I was too comfortable in the car and too shy, too aware of how good Marietta and Isabelle would be as a team without me.I was correct. Two men emerged with rakes they used to gather the lavender cut by the tractor. Soon the man on the tractor was posing for a picture. The two men were leaning on their rakes, talking to Marietta and Isabelle. Marietta was doing her part in spite of her language handicap.In a about fifteen minutes they returned reporting that the temperature outside was cooling and telling of their ability to disarm the men, distract them from their work and get the men to tell them about their fields. One told them they could only stand being in Paris for a day. Looking around the mountains and the purple lavender fields, one could understand why. The other offered to sell his fields and house to them and let them do the work.Hard work, it had to be. The fields were half brown dirt and half rock. It was amazing that anything grew here. Even though this year’s crop was a poor one, I could not miss the beautiful purple haze in the field or the aroma of lavender when the tractor cut a fresh row.We returned to the house and Christian had begun to plan dinner. He brought out some shish kabobs of steak, peppers and onions. He cooked some spaghetti and opened a fresh bottle of red wine. We sat down to a meal that began with the main course. This was followed by a salad of greens dressed in balsamic vinegar and olive oil from this region. This was followed by a dessert of fromage (cheese), goat cheese, blue cheese, chambray, swiss and “apricot,” nectarines and figs I picked from the tree in front of the house.At dinner we discussed plans for Isabelle and Christian to visit us and Charlotte in the United States. Christian began his negotiation by saying since I agreed to vacation with you (Isabelle) for two weeks so far from Paris this year, perhaps next year you will relent after my fifteen years of suggesting, that we go to my mother’s home only an hour from France.I had never seen Isabelle respond so strongly. “Hah! Go with you to your mother’s, where you will talk and joke with her. She will play the piano. You will read and work on your computer and who will go with me on a walk in the forest. I will have to go by myself, while you will be happy with your work and your mother. No. I won’t go. I must be at least 300 kilometers south of Paris for my summer vacation. I will go with you to your mother’s for the weekend, but not for my summer vacation.”Usually Isabelle defers to Christian but he had clearly found one of her limits. Her vacations were precious to her and she had a clear vision of what she needed.As her voice lowered, she said, “I need a change from my work. I need to be in nature and go on walks and hikes. I want to be away from crowds and familiar places. I need this change. It restores my soul.”Marietta and I were quiet, but this fight was very familiar to us. We bought a condo in Park City, Utah, on the agreement that we would pay for it in part by using it as our vacation destination for the extended future.That lasted from 1993 until 1999, when Marietta revolted with “I’m bored with Utah I want to go to Europe,” thus our first trip to visit Christian and Isabelle. Marietta was just as clear and tenacious as Isabella.I have an affinity for Christian. He is almost ten years younger than I. At forty-eight I was much like him. That was the year we bought our condo in Utah and I looked forward to vacationing every year in familiar territory. Each visit I hoped would allow us to sink further below the venire of the place, hoping to make friends there and perhaps create an identity for ourselves. We have made some inroads and have some Park City friends, but most of the time, when we go there, I write and Marietta goes alone on explorations of the area.I think my late forties were the height of my curmudgeondom. One of the requirements for being a curmudgeon is being unaware of it and having a great many reasons for it. Honesty was one. “I’m just being truthful about how I feel. I don’t want to go.” But I was not really being truthful, I was afraid to go.I treated myself as if I were the master of the world. When I was most depressed I would use newspapers and magazines as tools to support my imaginary importance. It was as if I were President and my opinion could shape the world. Therefore I needed to be briefed. Television news, Newsweek, Time and the New York Times were brought to my door to inform me so that I could develop a considered opinion about the issue of the day. I did this because…I don’t know why I did this. Perhaps to feed my ego to think that the world needed me to know.All I know that my depression was marked by my news addiction. As I got less depressed, I required less news. When I was more depressed, I seemed to consume more news. I don’t know if this is true for Christian, because he is an employee of the French government. What decisions the government makes may be part of his daily life. But this certainly isn’t true for me.Three things happened that helped me become aware of my curmudgeondom. One is my observations of the careers of colleagues in academe. They seemed to have career low points in their early fifties. This happens because of a confluence of a number of factors. A factor is one’s arrogance. At fifty you are near the height of your professional power. You are more likely to assume too much power at this point. Old mistakes begin to be exposed. Your flaws begin to show more easily. Another factor in this confluence is that this is the beginning of the time when the younger generation begins to assert itself. While you have been spending most of your adult life proving you are indispensable, they are showing you, perhaps for the first time, that you are not. Another factor in the confluence is the aging process. You become aware that you are not as strong physically or as quick mentally.This is different than the forties mid-life crisis. That was, for me, resignation to myself and my life. It had less to do with losing my professional cachet, than with giving up my dreams. It was more internal and personal. This fifties event seems to me to have moments of painful professional attacks that hit me at a time when I am not sure about myself.This, of course, is a humbling experience. It cast me back on to my dependence on Marietta for validation and confirmation. I have had two failed marriages. When Marietta burst into tears with me and Ellen at the restaurant before our 1999 trip and told me that she had hated our trip to Europe and was dreading the upcoming one, I was startled. Travel was one of those things we both proclaimed we would enjoy, when and if we retired and now Marietta seemed to be rejecting me too. I felt I had to do something about that. Thus, my quest to take on my complaining and rigidity, which had given structure to my aging maleness. I knew I needed to find defenses that were less onerous on her. This was then the second factor of the fifties fall after humility.But humility leads one to the third factor. Humility helped me become more open and more aware of the difficulties my character postures were creating for others. This openness and motivation to change lead me to this writing and to working on transforming myself from curmudgeon to something better.The power of the curmudgeon comes with editing and complaining about the plans of those around him. (I say him, though hers can play the role as well, because men seem to be champions at this role). Nothing is a good idea to a curmudgeon, especially when it comes to him going or doing something. He is nonplussed by everything. The only things that seem to interest him are his ideas. Hence, my writing on vacations. Hence, my writing now. This was my idea.The curmudgeon is correct to say that everywhere you go you are still there, but said in this context, it means that your character flaws are still there for those you love to suffer through. Perhaps, wherever you are, people wish you weren’t and you are accepted only because people are forced to accept you.This is not necessarily a strange or bad thought for the curmudgeon. In fact being tolerated, in spite of his ill-humor, is one way he proves he is loved or powerful. If it is love, however it is a love only a mother could have.The phrase, “pretty places are like breasts; once you have seen one you have seen two,” not only is an insult to femininity, it is an insult to pretty places and inadvertently to the speaker. It says that pretty places don’t have their unique qualities and that the speaker would not be able to recognize these qualities if he saw them.I must confess. Pretty places sometimes are like poems are to me. I often don’t get the point. They are often wasted on me.That night, after dinner, Marietta and I went for a walk to the village. We had some ice cream that wasn’t very good and then we walked back. As we climbed the hill toward home, we saw a red glow and smoke rising from below. The neighbors were out looking. They knew that the fire was the lavender plant at the edge of town. Lavender is processed in many ways. One of them is to press the dry lavender for its oil. That is what this plant did.The flames from the fire must have been fed by the oil. They leapt spectacularly above the trees, high above the skyline of the other buildings. The firemen seemed feeble in their attempts to contain it. (We heard the next day that usually water was pumped from the river to fight fires, but the river was so low that it didn’t have enough water to feed the water pumps.)Car lights popped on all over the city and headed for high ground for a better view of the fire. Several came to a parking spot just below us. We watched the fire, the firemen trying to contain it, the police and fire trucks blinking lights and directing traffic and the fire seeming to rage on, unaffected.The next day the fire still smoldered. Speculation was rife about town. This was the poorest year for a lavender crop in this region in memory. The fire occurred on July 14, French Independence Day or Bastille Day, right across from a gas station. It would be almost impossible to tell how it started. There was a fire in the same factory fifteen years earlier. Now in this town of 2000 locals, more than twenty jobs would be lost.We left Buis-les-Baronnies and the fire to explore the countryside some more in our air-conditioned car. We returned home and dressed for dinner at the restaurant, Auburge de Malquery. We walked down the hill t dinner. The tables in this restaurant sat under a grove of uillel trees. These trees have a blossom that is harvested in June that makes tea. There is a special honey (or miel) that bees make from these flowers, that has a unique taste that reminded me of cream and sugar. It left a particular aftertaste similar to Echinacea.We arrived late for our 9:00 reservation. (I should mention that here 9:00 P.M. was 2100 heures. Keeping military time creates a different image of the day as time creeps toward 24:00 heures.) Though we were thirty minutes late, there were plenty of choices for a table. We found one next to one of the ten large trees in this grove. The sun was just setting.The owner seated us and chatted with us about the recent fire. Isabelle was impertinent enough to ask him if the fire was the result of arson. He didn’t know. She wondered, if the fire fifteen years ago had been purposely started. He didn’t know. Did they collect insurance then? He thought so. Is there insurance this time? He expected so. What will happen to the workers? He didn’t know. Isabelle complained about the heat. He concurred it was the worst in years and that May and June were more reliably pleasant months in Provence. Isabelle told him about the legend of le ventre de Pantios and the wind reliably coming out of a hole in the ground each day at 5:00 P.M.He told us the legend of the creek that ran in front of the restaurant. It was the reason for the name of his restaurant. Auberge is an old name of a place to stop with one’s horse and have a good meal. Malguery is the word for fully cured. It seems that Buis-les-Baronnies was known for its medical care. People would come from all around to the hospital on this creek. When they crossed the creek to leave they were fully cured, hence, Malguery.The food we ate, was délicieux. Marietta had rare duck breast with well done ratatouille and green beans wrapped in bacon. The rest of us had a delicate white fish with the same vegetables. The local red wine was Syrah Barron le Frais, 2001. It was meant to be consumed shortly after if was bottled. It was fresh and light, easy on the tongue.The local July 14 celebration was in full swing just outside the restaurant in a small plaza. After dinner we joined the celebration. A band played rock and roll music that was a mixture of American 70’s and 80’s music and some French rock tunes that we weren’t familiar with. One tune was a French adaptation of This Land is Your Land, a sixties Pete Seeger tune. We joined Charlotte, Jean Pierre, Michline, Vincent, Delphine and Guilliam at a table in the town centre.Marietta gamely tried to engage Jean Pierre in conversation. He gamely tried to respond, until finally he insisted that Michline change seats with him and she tried to communicate with Marietta above the noise of the band.For a curmudgeon this presented a strong temptation to flee. Christian found a reason, when Charlotte needed him to write a prescription. Me, I was stuck. All ages were represented at the party. And old man on a respirator was there with his wife and a beer on his table. Young children bounced up and down in front of the band. Adolescents waved their arms and sang with the music and mature couples danced with well-practiced dance steps.One eighteen-year-old boy, in particular, caught my attention. He was the opposite of curmudgeon. He seemed to celebrate every beat of the music with his body. Sometimes he had a pretty girl, as a partner and sometimes not. His movements were fluid and graceful. His face beamed with delight.Part of me wanted to be him and part of me wanted to go home ASAP. Probably I thought, letting the music possess me, as the body had, was the antidote to curmudgeondom. But I imagined how silly it would look for me or me and Marietta to be lost in the music on the dance floor.I thought I would give it a try. I was afraid to go it alone, so I asked Marietta. Of course, she was game. So we two old fahrts began to shuffle about on the dance floor. We were doing all right, until Marietta decided she wanted to lead.Ladies, if you want to discourage a man from emerging from his curmudgeon defenses, insist on leading and dancing your dance instead of dancing one with which he is comfortable. Your man will close down like a morning-glory, when the sun sets. Or anyway, I will. And did. When Marietta broke rank from me, I felt lost and abandoned. I could only see the old and the fahrt in us dancing and all confidence in my poise and grace left me.Anyway, I think I did learn another lesson in fighting my curmudgeon impulses. Let the music take you or let the spirit of the setting and the people influence you. This is what performers invite you to do when they use the words “give it up for…” in cajoling applause from a crowd. Give up your defenses and let the spirit move you. I imagine the giant tectonic rocks pushing out the top of the Mount Saint-Julian, just above the town, creating the hogs back we can see from our apartment. There it is right in front of me as a write this. Let the powerful imagery of rock pushing through the earth enter my heart and speak to me. God, let my rigid tectonic plate move.What is this coming out from under my curmudgeon shell? It has no form yet. I don’t know whether it will be an improvement, a better set of postures or another set of calcified defenses. I want to dance and I want to hide.My mind tells me that times like these are the best of times, but my stomach tells me I’m about to faint. The music has moved me. Is this what it is like to allow the spirit to be free, to give it up and be influenced by my surroundings? Am I betraying the essence of who I am? Is this honest? Is this safe? Is this supposed to be fun? I didn’t have an answer.The next day we got up, early for us, 8:30, and went to the Marche in Vaison de la Roman. There, I became grounded in my dislikes. The crowds, the slow walking and looking that hurt my back.  The toting was bad, but not as bad as the standing, walking slow and standing some more. I didn’t like enduring Marietta’s driving and her not knowing that she had to put the clutch in to start the car when the car was in gear. In her defense she got up the difficult driveway to our house very gracefully, better than I have. It is hard for me to be a passenger with her at the wheel.The Marche moved me, but in the wrong way.  I was tired and quiet on the way back. I wondered what I had missed about the Marche. For many people this teeming mass of entrepreneurial energy was fascinating. There were chickens with their feet attached, pigeons, crabs, fresh fish, vegetables, pesto and other sauces, spices in small sacks tied with string, cloth goods, racks of clothes, cheeses, meats, especially sausages, melons and fruits, free tastes of everything.How could I not like this? Perhaps it is that I don’t have an agenda for going to the Marche like Isabelle and Marietta. These things are the raw materials for their production. Since I had just as soon go out to eat than bother to cook, I don’t appreciate what the Marche offers. I feel like a servant, beast of burden, a billfold, but enthusiasm and energy of this (according to Isabelle) extraordinary Marche does not enter my soul. I know the problem is with me, but I don’t know why it is a petit mourir to go to the la Marche.The night before, I had a dream. It was set in my hometown Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Carla Ray, my childhood, next-door neighbor, a year my junior, was setting up a restaurant in a gym there. Two workers were building a floor in a raised part of the building. She was very pleased with their craftsmanship. I worried about how she might cool the gym. She pointed to the windows that rimmed the top of the gym and told me that the tall ceiling and the breeze from the windows will cool the building.After returning from la Marche, we had supper at home and traveled to Vaison la Roman for a concert of Tango music and dance set in the ancient ruins of an outdoor Roman theatre. The theatre was exactly as you might imagine, rows of stones set in a semicircle, moving upward along the side of a hill. There were still a few original columns set at the top of the theatre.Prior to the show fifteen or so people, dressed mostly in black, came on the stage and spread themselves out so they took up the whole stage. One of them held the microphone, while another one held a written statement from which the man with the microphone read. The audience occasionally erupted in boos and opposing applause throughout the speech. Isabelle explained that this was a statement asserting their demands to the government that stage workers be considered artists and receive similar compensation from the government.Earlier we had watched the French President, Jacque Chirac, give his state of the Nation Address on July fourteenth. Afterwards, he was interviewed for two hours on French television. We watched for a time with Christian. During part of this interview he addressed the question concerning the stage technician’s strike that caused the cancellation of many of the festivals in the South of France this year. He said that the country should and does support the intermittent artist. They earn their yearly income in only two months a year, usually July and August. Chirac, according to Christian, said that the artist is the vision and imagination that defines a country’s identity. Therefore, the country must support them. The questions to be decided are whether or not the stage support staff can get work other times of the year and who should be given the status of artist.It was hard for me to imagine an American president acknowledging our country’s debt and dependence on our country’s art community or an American debate over whether to pay stage hands the same wage as actors.The concert was excellent. The dancers were elegant some athletic and acrobatic. Others were older and danced a slower more seductive, sophisticated dance. One couple consisted of an old man at least seventy and a gorgeous young woman. When they came on stage, the audience gasped in disgust, but as they danced a slow graceful and provocative tango, the audience warmed to their talent and poise. When they finished, the audience broke out in extraordinarily loud and long applause.The thought that we were sitting where people have sat for hundreds over a thousand years, in these very seats was overwhelming to me. The problem was my back. During a particularly compelling part of the concert, I forgot that my back hurt. Then the dance would be over and my pain would return and I began counting the numbers left to perform on the program to try to figure out how much time I had to suffer. Then the dancers would come out again and I would forget my discomfort. Oh my kingdom for a seat with a back.We returned home after midnight. The weather reports were that this was the night that a front would pass through. When we went to bed at 1:00 there was a small breeze typical of the preceding nights. Then about 4:00 AM the winds came and the windows and doors began banging in the house. The winds were so hard that they slowed down the electric fan. I awoke and closed some of the banging windows and doors and secured the ones I left open.I went back to sleep and dreamed Marietta and I were making love on the front porch of somebody else’s house. To get back to our car (the blue rental Renault we were driving in France) we had to walk through the house. We disturbed a dog and the man of the house. He glared us with anger. I feebly tried to offer an explanation. We escaped the house and got to the car. The scene in my dream changed. I was treating a couple. They were divorced and I was advising the man about how to get along with his difficult ex-wife for the sake of his children. The wife was a lesbian. I shifted tactics and began to wonder if he wanted to consider remarrying his ex-wife. Clearly, to him, that was a bad idea, but so was divorce a bad idea.Isabelle interpreted my two dreams. In the first one set, in Arkadelphia about my next door neighbor Carla Ray, she suggested that I was pleased with my new construction of my character. It was large well ventilated and the raised platform seemed to be well constructed. In the next dream I obviously felt exposed and embarrassed. I was wondering whether or not I could retreat back to my former self. Clearly that was not a good idea.The next day was dedicated to my return to curmudgeon. At the Marche in Vaison le Roman we tried to cash some of our travelers checks at a bank. “Non, no cash, pas cash depuis Euros.”“Where do we go?” I asked.Marietta translated, “Ow est la pour changer le cheque?”The bank tells responded, “Le Poste.” We were so pleased that we seemed to be negotiating our way so well.One of the antidotes that I proposed to curmudgeon was “je ne sais pas” or I don’t know. Not knowing, being curious and accepting help I thought would create a sense of wonder and magic. This would expel my demand for mastery (real or imagined) my denial of my incompetence and my arrogance. It would give me a humility that would make me more accessible.So we went to the Paste. It was closed, but that was d’acort (okay). We could go to the Poste tomorrow in Buis. So first thing I went down to the village center, found the Poste, waited in line, presented my checks. They understood me and I understood them. This was not the place. La banque. So I went to the bank. Again in a combination of French and English I understood them and they me. “Did I have an account there?” “No.” “Sorry we don’t cash these checks.” My “je ne sais pas” distressed damsel routine was wearing thin, but I thought I would go the Office of Tourisme. Surely they would tell me what to do. They did. Go to the place with the red sign. I found it. No, they did not cash traveler’s checks. Go to a bigger city, maybe there.I was totally flummoxed. The “je ne sais pas” strategy was totally overrated as a substitute for money and competence. Isabelle would come to the rescue later, I hoped, but for the moment it was difficult to be so ineffectively dependent. I felt like a fifty-year-old woman trying to hitch a ride in shorts and a halter-top. My version of damsel didn’t seem to be inspiring rescue. Perhaps I should have fainted.A warning to European travelers, since Euros have been the currency all over Europe, except in the U.K., don’t get travelers checks. Take your credit card and don’t forget your pin number, as I did. I found an automatic teller and somehow my credit card produced Euros for me.The next day I let go of my “je ne sais pas” strategy and took up another. I decided to take the challenge to shred my curmudgeon skin that says “once you have seen one pretty place you have seen two.” Meaning there is nothing different in one’s individual experience of pretty places. And I hope to find unique beauty and joy in a new setting.This day we were off on a circular trip to Nyon, going around Mont Venteux. A few miles outside Buis, we realized that I was supposed to bring my travelers checks. This realization almost ruined my appetite for the trip, but soon we came upon a valley of blue lavender, the likes of which we had not yet seen. The blue was not just an aura emerging from the ground, as we had seen before. It was bright blue in clear rows, like a series of velvet ribbons placed one beside the other with their soft threads waving in the breeze. Unlike the other dryer, fainter lavender fields, these fields had a clear unmistakable scent that filled the air around for miles. It is a scent like no other that has no other name but lavender. It is soft, sweet, blue and words I do not know.If one grew up here, this blue would have to become part of your blood. It poured into my soul, like the new green of spring sometimes does in my heart, hungry for life to emerge from the dead of winter. The blue was alive and dominant, framed by the brown tan earth that marked the rows. This earth was so rocky and dry, that nothing else would grow in these fields. This French farmer en Provence had used the sun and what little water he had, to its best advantage.If this were one’s childhood home, there would have to be something special about your essence if you knew this blue from birth. I feel that way about my hometown, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, the last role of a hill from the Ozark Mountains. These hills rolled from Northwest Arkansas as far south as they can reach and that’s Arkadelphia. It’s where the Caddo River meets the Ouchita River. Its streets were lined with 100 year old pin oaks, whose tops touched high above the streets, forming a sanctuary for its children, riding the streets all through the town on bicycles. I know what these giant trees did for me. I know what effect the ravines around the rivers had on my courage. I know what the expanse of timber and farmland, meeting the rolling hills at the edge of town, did for my imagination. We, who had the privilege of growing up there, have a special identity. There is something we know and understand about that place and each other that has no words.This must be true of the people that come from these lavender fields and this is the challenge. How is this beautiful place different from other beautiful places? What does it do, that is unique and special, to the souls of its people?This blue must teach the people, who grow up with it, some sense about color, tone and ambience. It must give them a special appreciation for how things smell. It must affect their tastes, how and what they eat and drink. It must give them a special appreciation for the incidental elements of daily living.There, I did it. I answered the challenge. I saw a pretty place. I looked for and found, what I thought must be unique about it and how it made its people special, different than me, with something special to give and teach me.I thought about the topography of Buis-les-Baronnies. Buis is the word for a small tree that looks something like the boxwood. Many of such trees dotted the hills around the town. Also large Plantan trees and Tuille trees shade the town streets. Fruit trees were everywhere around Buis, fig, apricot, cherry, and peach, walnut trees, as well. The town was cut out of the mountains by a small river that, in places, was small enough to jump across. The nearest mountain, Mount Saint-Julian, had an outcropping of giant rocks at the top that formed a hogback. These rocks seemed to reflect an enthusiasm and irrepressible strength that was not always appropriate, but must somehow be expressed. Large balltops of olive trees climbed the terraces of steep fields edging the village. All the land was used either by a road, a house, a tree, or a plant. Though this space received little more rainfall than a desert, nothing was wasted. (But that was true everywhere in Provence.) The river here, the hills emerging quickly from the river, the trees, the close surrounding mountains, the hogback of rocks pushing out of the Baronnies mountains right next to the town, these are what defined this town as unique. Energy, refuge, enough water but not too much must create a special human inhabitant with a joie de vivre that is rare. I saw it in Jean Pierre and in the boy at the dance. I saw it in the rudeness of the bank teller and the warmth that spilled out of Michline.As we left the valley of the lavender fields, we moved across a pass into a more expansive valley. It was greener. The mountains that surrounded it were much further from the center of the circle they formed. These hills rolled like the hills of southwest Arkansas, but they had mountains, which created vistas that I had never imagined as a boy. Not far from any point of this valley was an angle, an upgrade, that gave an onlooker a perspective that transcended the trees. The lines weren’t as steep as they were in Buis-les-Barronies. They were soft and round. The colors were greener, less harsh and desert like. Mont Venteux still formed a part of the distant skyline, but one who lived here must have had more room and perhaps more flexibility, perhaps more wealth and more opportunity. The churches seemed bigger to me, the castles grander.This challenge to see the unique beauty and strength of each place and imagine how that might affect the human spirit was interesting to me now. It kept my interest. I couldn’t seem to get Marietta and Isabelle into the puzzle I was trying to piece together; about the land, its texture, and its people. Perhaps it was too much work for them. Perhaps they would rather have their minds disengaged and simply absorb the land’s beauty, rather than justify or explain it, as I seemed to need to do.But whatever their needs, my curmudgeon spirit seemed to need a task. It is as if I must have something to examine and describe. If I do not have a positive task on which to focus, I will unleash my critical self in the form of sarcastic editorials, complaints and negative expressions about whatever. Taking on the challenge of differentiating among pretty places and their effects on its people seemed to be a great improvement over my negativity. But I’m not the one to ask. Later perhaps Marietta will offer an opinion. She after all is the expert on how my spirit affects others.Isabelle seemed to understand that there is something about the essence of a place when she told us how she and Christian decided to return to France after he completed his fellowship in Cardiology at Vanderbilt.“After the fellowship, Christian had several offers for work,” she said. “One in Nashville, one in Canada, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Paris. We chose to return to Paris where Christian would be paid much less, where it would take more than one year to find a job, where we would be required by finances to live in a dusty centuries old building that gave my son asthma and where we lived on the floor below Christian’s parents.“I wanted to return to Paris, not because of family. I enjoyed being free of those duties and ties and did not wish to live so near my in-laws. It was not because of friends because I had made many new friends in Nashville that I would be sad to leave. I wanted to return to Paris because of the age of things there. I missed the smell of stone streets, the old buildings, the plaster walls that dated back to Roman times. I really missed the weekly Marche and picking among all of the fresh vegetables, fruits and meats. I feel somehow better now, being in this place with this Marche and this way of life going back so many years.”This made sense to me. I had an option to remain in Palo Alto after my internship there, but I came back to Nashville, because everything in California seemed so impermanent. Nobody I knew was born there. Though it was the most beautiful climate I had ever lived in, it seemed to have no soul that I could tap into. I understood the green hills of Nashville, the tall trees, the azaleas in spring, the pink, red, orange, yellow maples in fall. People had roots there, roots I felt I could join. Isabelle’s roots were even deeper. Where I knew nothing in Arkadelphia much over 100 years old, she knew things attached to stories over 1,000 years old. She loved these places, things and their stories. They were part of her.I dreamed last night that Marietta was two-timing me. She preferred the other guy, the one she had been with before me. He called her on the phone and told her to meet him and they would make love in the phone booth. This conversation took place right in front of me. She hung up the phone and left me there. The end.Isabelle and I deduced that Marietta, in my dread, symbolized my feminine side. I currently preferred my old set of masculine defenses to the new ones I was developing.Two PositionsPerhaps the most interesting thing about this trip to me is the contrast of cultures between France and the U.S. as I reflect on the points of view of Isabelle and Christian. There are two positions currently of note to me. One has to do with Charlotte and the other with religion.The last time we were here, we observed how Isabelle and Christian were adjusting to their eighteen-year-old son, Thomas’ semi-public position to be sexually active with his serious girlfriend. The question then was why was it okay for them that their son brought his girlfriend to their house to spend the night with him.The answer was a pragmatic one, “Because, if we didn’t, he wouldn’t come here to sleep. He would go to her apartment, where they could sleep together. We want to see him as much as possible. Fortunately, our apartment is close to his school, so it’s convenient for them to be here.”Now Charlotte at nineteen presented a parallel question to her parents. “Can I move into an apartment with my first serious boyfriend, Vincent and two other roommates?”The answer was yes, but with more trauma and emotion. Charlotte has very good grades through her first two years of college and while the answer was yes, her father thought it was a mistake, but it was her choice to make and she would learn from it right or wrong. Here the decision was the same as before, but there seemed to be a bit more emotion from father to daughter.When Charlotte and her father were together, you could see why. Her eyes lit up in her conversations with her father (of which I could not understand a word). Christian’s curmudgeon exterior melted. A soft smile came to his face. His gestures were lively and animated. They both laughed together easily and a lot. I could understand Christian’s answers to Charlotte in this context.The second cultural observation had to do with religion. I talked about this on our last visit to France. Isabelle was fascinated by churches and abbeys. She seemed sympathetic to all things spiritual, but skeptical of people who tried to represent them. The official church seemed to her to be fake and hypocritical. The French, during the Huguenot period, experienced horrible civil wars. From the twenty-first century perspective religious dogma seem so silly to both her and Christian. Then there is the land, wealth and excess of the Catholic Church that seemed only to benefit its clergy and not the people.This skepticism seemed to be reflected in a local hardware storekeeper in Nyons. We had been searching for a transformer to use to for my camera’s battery charger. The hardware store keeper in Nyons said he had one, but he would have to get it. It would be there at 1400 heuras (2:00 PM).When we returned to pick it up, it was a giant box weighing fifteen pounds. Since buying this old contraption was cheaper than a camera with film we took it. While there, we asked him for directions to the cave out of which came “le ventre de Pantois.” Isabelle related the legend she had just read in the local guidebook. He said there is another legend and that was that a government minister brought the wind, not a catholic cleric.I wondered whether his was a revisionist story told after the French revolution, because of the anti-catholic spirit that has pervaded France since that time. Though I don’t claim to believe either story, we went to see this hole from which the wind blew. We found it where the guidebooks said it would be, 100 meters from a small church named Notre Dame.It was covered with a steel mesh gate because someone had died exploring the cave in the last twenty or so years. It was easy to believe that this hole appeared suddenly because there was a large crevice running along the mountain here that this cave was a part of. Perhaps the limestone of the strata of rock had dissolved and an earthquake or something occurred so that the rock split here. It was believable that a sudden geological event happened here years before. Whether or not it changed the wind, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. When we were there (2:00 P.M.) the wind was not blowing from the cave.Jean PierreJean Pierre is Michline’s boyfriend or significant other. He is a retired restaurateur, formerly from Paris. He is about 65-70 years old. Every time we saw him, he was wearing shorts, sandals and an opened necked shirt with a gold chain or he was wearing a bathing suit. Though we couldn’t understand him, nor he us, he was always smiling and friendly. He had his own house very near Michline’s but he helped her build her house and swimming pool. Michline’s children called him “Jempy.”He laughed easily and often. He came to the July 14^th dance in the town square with Michline and company. He bought us all drinks and he responded to Marietta’s attention kindly, but was clearly frustrated that they could not communicate better.When not talking, he was swaying with the music, singing with the crowds on songs that most of the audience seemed to know by heart. On one song he was so animated that he bounced his plastic chair and turned it in circles. I imagined Jean Pierre to be the prototype Frenchman who knew how to eat, drink, relax and enjoy life. He had a woman, but was not encumbered by marriage. He seemed to be warmly appreciated by her children and he seemed to love hosting them and us.MichlineMichline was a fifty-fiftyish nurse and mother. She was aglow with the children, who had come to share their summer vacation with their mother. She was solicitous of us and her children’s friends. She was dressed in ways that showed her ample cleavage to its best advantage. She moved with a “softique” rubenesque sensuality. She obviously appreciated Jean Pierre’s attention and he obviously was pleased to be with her.Her sensuality and earthiness seemed to be so natural for her. She seemed to take great pleasure in shopping for and feeding her suddenly enormous family which included herself, Jean Pierre, her two daughters, another girlfriend of her daughters, her daughter’s boyfriend, Guilliam and his friend Vincent and Vincent’s girlfriend, Charlotte and other assorted comers and goes.As I imagine her in her bathing suit, sitting at the large outdoor table under the portico, next to her swimming pool, I see her bringing an endless stream of wine and food, encouraging her brood to swim or come out of the pool and eat and drink. She standing beside her man, Jean Pierre, represented the typical, life-affirming French woman.Madame FachenerriOur neighbor, landlord and concierge, Madame Fachenerri invited us on a two and a half hour walk in the evening, after we returned from our trip to Nyon. While Christian declined, the three of us accepted.Marietta and Isabelle put some water in a thermos, cut some bread, cheese, picked some fruit from the table and packed deu sac ‘a dos (two day packs). I carried one, Isabelle the other. Madame Fachenerri had the same idea. She came walking below our balcony at about 8:00 P.M., saddled with her own sac ‘a dos. The sun still shone brightly, even though it was on its way toward sunset.Madame Fachenerri was a short round sixty-plus-year-old woman. The hike she proposed was straight up the hill in back of her (our) house. Our pace was slow but constant. We walked through the fields while Madame Fachenerri chattered constantly in French. Isabelle even had some difficulty understanding her rapid speech. Marietta said she understood about every third word. Me, I understood every tenth word, which was mari, meaning husband.She talked mostly about her husband. He was a lot like Christian she said. He wouldn’t want to go for a walk, either. Isabelle translated some of her chatter. Isabelle said she talked French like an Italian.We saw her husband in the house. He was always hooked to an oxygen machine. It seemed that his work as a contractor and stonemason, a profession he had had since he was ten years old, created so much dust that he now has emphysema.She and her husband, according to Isabelle, were much like Isabelle and Christian. She loved travel and nature walks. He only wanted to work. She loved music, dancing and swimming. He only wants to work. They have three sons. One lives in Bordeaux. He’s married to a doctor. He works part-time and takes care of their four children, while his wife works full-time. The other two sons live with her. One is married with two children. The other is single and recently jilted by his girlfriend of eight years with his best friend. She liked the girl, made her one of the family. The girl had good parents. She doesn’t blame the girl. She blames them both.They were building a house just below for one son and his family. The construction is at a standstill because her husband got sick. Also the house is not what her son and his wife want. They had planned to build a home for each of their children on their land. All plans seem to be put on the back burner since her husband’s illness. She told stories about her grandchildren and her friend in Paris and when she got married and how the olives were picked.At Christmas time the olive harvest is on in earnest. People pick olives by hand and put them in sacks, hanging around their necks or they use a special rake to shake and pull the olives down from the tree.As she talked, and Isabelle, bless her heart, listened and translated, we walked up through olive groves, then onto a gravel road by blackberry briars. We picked and ate a few blackberries. Each berry was small with only a few sacks of juice and pulp, but, oh, they were sweet. Then came apricot groves. Each of us ate several, perhaps ten. They were so sweet. Some were hard and dry, but even those were still sweet. The road was dotted with cherry trees filled with ripe, tart, red cherries, plum trees with fruit we couldn’t reach, dead or dying almond trees, walnut trees with not yet ripe, green, covered nuts.We reached the apex of our walk about 9:30. The sun set about the same time. We walked in twilight. The view of Buis from above and the vista of the surrounding mountains, including the 6,000-foot tall Mont Venteux and the hogback topped Mt. St. Julian were extraordinary from this perspective in this light. We returned home by 10:00 P.M., as the half moon rose over the mountain.The next day was so hot, 36º centigrade. By Marietta’s formulae that made it 104º Fahrenheit. We all stayed close to home. We closed the shutters at about 11:00 AM to capture as much cool as possible and to keep out the light. This worked pretty well. The dry 104º was hot, but not overwhelming, as it would have been in humid Nashville.To reward ourselves for surviving the hottest day on record in 2003, we drove 10 kilometers to Mollans at the restaurant Le St. Marc for dinner. The dinner was good except for the fish soup, which had the same fish base for the bouillabaisse we had in Milan. Marietta’s rabbit was excellent. It was a row of slices of rabbit meat wrapped in abricot with a walnut in the center of each slice. Christian and I had confit ‘a canard. Which was a leg of duck cooked in tuille meil (honey) sauce. The meat fell off the bone. Isabelle had a light white fish lore or bar (which they thought was the American version of bass).The problem we had was not with the food. It was with the flies. It seemed that even though the river is almost dry, the hills above Mollans have springs that provide water to the town. In addition to drinking water, these springs provide irrigation water and people are allowed at special times to open the watergates for their individual purposes. A neighbor of St. Marc’s left open the watergate and it flooded the grounds of the restaurant with over a foot of water this morning. The moisture attracted an unusual amount of flies and they were a bother.Mecca ColaOnce home from supper, about 11:00 P.M. we went straight to bed, because we had accepted the invitation from Madame Facchinerri to go with her on another walk, this time to the top of Mt. Saint Julian at 6:15 A.M., several kilometers away by car. We had to get back in time before church, because she wanted to attend mass, at 11:00.In the morning Isabelle severed as our alarm clock by turning on the loud dishwasher at 5:45. We rolled out of bed. The sun was well into the sky. At 6:15 Madame Facchinerri came out with her sac ‘a dos. (In French this means “sack attached to the bones,”) which as you recall is a backpack. We put some fruit and water in ours and off we went in two cars. We followed her up a mountain road and dropped off our car at the trails end. We piled in her car. The car radio was singing in French at high volume. She asked if we wanted music. Isabelle said no.Perhaps she regretted this decision, because Madame Facchinerri began talking and didn’t stop for remainder of the trip. Isabelle’s first defense was to fall to the rear to take pictures, but that didn’t work for long because Madame Facchinerri stopped to wait for her to catch up.I was absolutely of no use, because I could barely understand what she meant when she said “arretez-vous” meaning “stop” or “a droit” when she meant “to the right.” Marietta was little better.This trip, Isabelle translated several stories. There was the story of her schooling in Italy. She was born in 1940. Her father left and was not home for several years, because he was fighting for the Italian resistance. He was presumed dead. She was sent to the convent, because her mother could not support five children. The nuns educated her. She left there at sixteen and came to France.Another story had to do with her sister, who was getting married for the third time. It was going to work this time, because she has been with this man for fifteen years.Then there was the story of her son meeting his wife the stewardess, in a yoga class in Buis. They have two children now. She was recently pregnant, only because she wanted an excuse to avoid flights to China, where she might catch SARS.The last story was about a niece of a friend of hers, who had been sexually abused by the nieces’ maternal grandfather. The mother blamed her daughter for these events, causing a schism in the family, between the niece and the other children and the mother. Since Isabelle was a psychologist, Madame Facchinerri wondered if she could explain how a mother could blame her own child for this rather than protect her.Isabelle did her best to answer this complex and difficult question.“This happens to me all the time,” Isabelle said. “People just talk to me and tell me their stories, whether they know I am a psychologist or not.” I can testify to this. I too used Isabelle to tell my stories too.Mt. St. Julian trail was uphill for about five kilometers. It was cool at first and the air fresh. But even without the heat, we were sweating a bit. My shirt was damp, where my sac ‘a dos pressed against it. The trail moved around St. Julian from behind the perspective we saw from the house. The vegetation consisted of buis bushes and scrub pine. There were wild lavender, rosemary and thyme along the trail. The rocks sometimes had black lichen in their cracks.I apologize for my clichéd expression “the views were spectacular,” but they were. We were high above Buis. We could barely pick out our house below. The giant rock eruptions that formed Mt. Saint Julian’s hogback were not as sharp and as narrow as one imagined. Often people rock climbed the side of them and hikers could walk directly on top of what looked like a sharp edge from below, but upon closer inspection was a six foot wide flat surface. At one point someone had placed a small metal cross barely visible from our house on top of the center of the hogback. Every year in June when the Catholic Church celebrates Ascension, luminary candles were placed on top of the hogback.We returned home from this hike at 11:00 AM and immediately went back to bed for a nap. We slept until about 14:00. The day was hot. We stayed shuttered up again in our house.When we got up Christian was watching grand prix racing on TV. We began again our constant conversation.“I don’t understand what happened.” Christian said. “After World War II, America was the country that liberated Paris. Oh sure, they let Charles De Gaulle and the French troops go in first, but everybody knew it was the U.S. that saved us. But since that really short time ago, America has lost its image here. You only show the worst of America to us, your movies advertise you as a violent country. Your corporations bring the worst of your commercialism here. McDonald’s is a symbol for that. Our Minister of Agriculture organized the storming of a McDonalds in the countryside. They demolished it. Chirac commuted a part of his sentence. He was popular in France for doing that.“An Algerian businessman capitalized on American’s poor image by bottling a version of a Coke or Pepsi calling it Mecca Cola. This was marketed as an alternative cola to the American version and it is doing well.“I have a scientist colleague who hates America because of its violence and commercialism, its’ mean spirited racism and inadequate social net, its arrogant go-it-alone, historically-ignorant foreign policy. I tell him that is correct, but it is only half the story. I don’t understand why America does not export the good side too, the can-do spirit, the openness to change and new ideas, the freedom to express various points of view, your anti-bureaucratic self-reliant spirit. One has to go to America to see this side.”“In France,” Christian said, “we think about each purchase. We don’t just buy. We think, do we really need it, or not. We cannot afford impulse buying and we don’t want to. We have enough money for what we need. Many of us, who are well-educated, could be richer if we didn’t take care of those, who are not working. But we want to do this. We don’t want to live rich, while others are poor. Perhaps this is our guilt problem. Yours is about sex. Of course, powerful leaders of countries have mistresses. So what. We don’t get hung up on that. We get hung up on making money. If someone makes a lot of money, we assume he did something wrong. Where, in your country, you don’t do that. But if someone is with a woman other than his wife, you assume he is a bad lawyer or doctor or president, when that has nothing to do with his competence in his professional role.I was not able to offer much of a defense or apology. We were the consumers he talked about. Were re-modeling our house, spending the banks money for things we could absolutely do without.Marietta is a CurmudgeonFor the last two walks I noticed something about Marietta that I had never seen before. She was complaining. It is not that Marietta never complains. “You never throw away the yogurt cup, after you rinse it out,” or “when you wipe the counters, they are never clean,” or “when you take off your socks at night, you always leave in a pile on the floor.” These are typical complaints, but on a trip it is usually me that complains.“Oh do we have to go?” or “my back hurts,” or I become sarcastic, “one more pretty place. When will we run out of them?”On our first walk with Madame Facchinerri it was, “It will be dark before we get back. Are we sure we will know how to get back?” or “When does this trail ever start going downhill,” or “that apricot was too hard.”I knew I had made progress, when it was my voice I heard respond with the positive retort, “Oh, but even hard, they are so sweet straight off the tree.” When Marietta said ‘I wonder if Madame Facchinerri will ever stop talking,’ I heard out of my mouth, “I think she has interesting stories, though, don’t you?”We had changed roles. In couples I see, when progress is being made, one of the two in the couple is psychologically far ahead of the other. If and when the one behind catches up, the problems that the other one creates for the partnership emerge or sometime they change roles. Changing roles like this is a sign of growth and progress in a couple. I said nothing about this, but I was secretly proud that I was catching up.It was on the next walk that I became concerned. Again Marietta was tired. It was 5:45 when she got up after all. “Why can’t we just sleep,” were my usual words, but they came out of Marietta’s mouth. Then came the clincher. “Let’s stop and take that picture,” I suggested and her reply was, “Oh it’s just another pretty place let’s go on and get this over with.” This is when I knew something was wrong.The next day this dark mood continued. It was most obvious at the Flaminco concert that night at the roman theatre at Vasion la Roman. I had purchased a special theatre chair with a back so I was happy. We were late meeting Charlotte and her friends. I drove as fast as I could to get there, but I couldn’t make up any time. We parked. Isabelle and I jumped out of the car and began a fast walk toward the theatre that was about 400 meters ahead. We were half way there before I realized that Marietta was walking about 50 meters behind. And she was not trying to catch up. I knew she felt like we ran off and left her. We stopped and waited and went through the theatre gates with her. When I asked her about it she pointed to her swollen ankles. Her ankles sometimes swell for no apparent reason and she will take a diuretic and they stop swelling. But they are uncomfortable for a while.Once seated and inside it was, “I think I like music concerts better.” “The dancers were all right but I don’t like how that lead woman dancer seems to lord it over everybody else.”The worst came when Isabelle invited Charlotte and her friends over for lunch for Wednesday their last day here, “Oh, but it will be too hot then and we will be all closed up in the dark.” While that was true, Marietta knew it was the only time Charlotte gave her mother for such an occasion. Marietta seemed to be looking for a fight with Isabelle.This confirmed by fears. Marietta had become a curmudgeon, fully fledged and initiated. This gave me a view from both sides of the equation. I can see the elements. One is pain, for me it is often a hurt back, for Marietta it was feet. Another is fatigue. I used to carry a fifty-hour case load, which meant I worked a sixty to eighty hour week and I was tired all the time. On vacations, rest was my main agenda. Now I work a normal week and I feel mostly rested. Marietta on the other hand gets up every day at 6:00 AM and gets home from work about 7:30 PM after a long day of refereeing disputes. The last few days we have gone on long walks and Marietta has not had time to get in very good shape. She was tired. And I forget about the heat. We were not used to sleeping in such heat. At night it was often 85° when we went to bed at 11:00. And once asleep, much later, we clung to our precious sleep as long as we could.The next element is competition. This is something that Marietta doesn’t feel as often as I do. Somehow I programmed to take up any challenge. I feel competitive juices flowing in me constantly. I am not proud of this. These juices create contests that could and should be easily avoided. When we are walking and looking on vacation and Marietta sees an expensive pretty necklace, I feel challenged to buy it for her. When I immediately realize I can’t, I feel inadequate. For me, and I think for many other men, these competitive feelings and their companion feelings of inadequacy are a constant companion. They are, I think, a center stone for a curmudgeondom. As Marietta became to feel competitive with Isabelle, she had three important elements for becoming a curmudgeon. She was feeling pain, she was tired and she was feeling inadequate.I recognized these elements because they have been so much a part of my life. Marietta will soon get enough sleep. She will take her diuretic and her feet will be back to normal. She is one to accept a challenge, but she does not take the bait as easily as I. She will soon feel as good as and equal to, instead of the less than she was feeling that me and other men feel a lot of the time.For me, it was liberating to see these things come together to turn Marietta from an easy to be with, positive enthusiastic person into a difficult woman. In her experience, I see the things that have made me a difficult man.I see things that made my father a difficult man. As a boy, I was curious. I wanted to travel and see the world. I wondered about the World’s Seven Wonders. I wanted to be Tarzan in Africa.I would imagine my father was the same way. Oh, I knew he had a reputation for having a temper, even as a boy. He had a much greater problem with anger than I have had. But his difficult personality had all the elements above. He was allergic to everything. Often, he could not breathe through his nose. In the summer in the humidity of south Arkansas, he must have suffered terribly. His constant companion was a bottle of nose spray. He ordered them by the dozen.He was challenged to compete. His father, my grandfather, had a psychotic break, when he was a young man and my father became the sole support for his mother and three sisters. Somehow, he helped put his sisters through college and later had to support his mother and father and his wife and four children. He worked hard. He was never financially comfortable. And, of course, he was tired.All the elements were there in him. By the time he was my age he was at the tail end of his intense financial demands, but his character was formed. He hadn’t the means or the will to change. Though he did mellow, as he got older, he remained a curmudgeon until the end.Incroyable C’est DunqueToday we were going on a trip to the Plateau Colorado. It is not in the U.S. It is in the South of France near Rousiallan en Provence between the Plateua de Vancluse and the Montagne Du Luberon. According to Isabelle it is a magic place. “The place, where if you die there, it’s all right.”To encourage Christian to come and to reassure us she promised, “You won’t have to go up. It is flat because it is a plateau. And it is cool, high above sea level. You may even be cold and need a jacket.”Christian resisted. He said, “I know what going on a walk in the country is. There is a view. You look at it for about ten minutes and it is beautiful, but most of the time, you are hot looking down at your feet, so that you won’t sprain you ankle. It’s one hour looking down at your feet and the rock, until you get to the view, ten minutes of a pretty view and then one hour back looking down at your feet and the rock.”In this case the trip was to be an hour and a half in the car to the trailhead, another three hours and then an hour and a half back. We met Emanuel and Caroline, their two children Julie and Margurite and their Canadian friends Dean and Leslie and their two children Ryan and Megan. The children ranged in age from ten to sixteen.The trip was more or less or advertised except there was some uphill grade in the beginning. This was sheepherder territory. This land is used by shepherds even today. Every spring, shepherds walk their sheep down from this mountain toward the coast. There are special routes designated for this trek. In the fall, they herd their sheep back to the mountains. This migration is exactly the opposite of the migration of Elk in Yellowstone Park, for example. It makes sense because in the summer the mountains are dry and in the winter they receive most of their rainfall and the weather is so temperate that it rarely falls to far below freezing.The shepherds have old stone cribs that look like igloos and attached stone shelters for themselves. They are built with old Roman arch construction designs.The land was dry. The flowers that had been there for Isabelle two years ago were not there, but the views were, three hundred and sixty degree panoramas. On a very clear, low-humidity day, one can see the Alps from here, but not today. And we were grateful for the clouds.As we walked, Isabelle asked me to explain this word curmudgeon I kept using. As I explained this concept and suggested that men often suffered this condition more than women, Dean overheard our conversation. He said, “I’m the opposite of that I love to enjoy life.”Yet, when we stopped at the apex of our walk for a picnic, he began to complain, “This walk is too long. How far have we come,” shortly another complaint came. “I would rather be drinking a beer than this.” Or “Where is the air conditioner?” A curmudgeon among us, in denial perhaps?Dean, in spite of his curmudgeon spirit, was an excellent father. We saw his son walking in front of the “peloton” (the walking group) and he took that opportunity to walk with him, his arm around his son and his son’s arm around him. They laughed and talked together, as they walked for some time. His daughter Megan was equally attended to by her father. She wanted her turn to carry the sac ‘a dos and he saw to it that she had it. He teased her and kept her connected to the group. He encouraged his children’s physical play with one another. Clearly, Megan and Ryan were unusually close for a brother and sister at that age.Ryan was a typical energetic teenager. When we came upon one of the shepherd buildings, he climbed on top and began to throw stones. He was immediately chastised. He clearly meant no harm and barely understood the reprimand.This instinctive clash of generations, a group of late forty and fifty year olds wanting to respect and preserve history, as they faced their own aging and prospects of leaving the planet and the young adolescent saw history as confining and to be torn down to make way for the creations of a new generation.Emanuel, who was also a superb father, joined his daughters in a well rehearsed and choreographed line dance. He clearly had taken the time to learn this dance from his daughters. Megan, their cousin, joined in the line. Later he led his daughters in the Sound of Music’s “Do a Deer a female deer, Ra a drop of… etc.” We all sang along.Emanuel reminded me of my cousin Jerry Vestal. His face held a smile longer than any expression. He seemed always willing to join and be influenced to be a part of whatever. When Isabelle lost her watch, he organized the search and spent an hour or more looking, until they found it. His wife Caroline was a lot like he and Isabelle. They were both teachers in France. He taught what we call Junior High or Middle School children. She was a teacher of French as a second language. Their daughter Julie was about the same age as Charlotte was the last time we came. She had Charlotte’s same confidence and irrepressible spirit. Her exuberance crossed our language barrier and she had her turn playing with everybody there, even Marietta and me. And we appreciated it.Emanuel was proof that a man can be something other than a curmudgeon. I wish I had more time with him so that he could show me how he did it. His response to Isabelle’s distress at losing her watch taught me one thing. And that was that patience, at a difficult moment, announces to people that you are not a curmudgeon, that in fact you are willing to be influenced by, accept and understand someone’s feelings, other than you own. Later, I used this technique by picking up trash on the trail. I hoped that I could somehow get points for that, if not here on earth, perhaps in heaven or perhaps in my own head, as I attempted to redefine my character.CHRISTIAN'S DAYWe were exhausted on day thirteen of our trip. This was Tuesday after we went to the Plateau Colorado with Isabelle’s cousin and his family and friends and after we returned from the Flamingo concert at 1:30 AM. I got up at 9:00 A.M., earlier than I intended. Isabelle was already awake. She had been up since 7:00 AM. I ate my wonderful Dannon Peche (peach) yogurt, the likes of this tart creamy version of yogurt I have never eaten.Christian was up by 10:00 AM. This was early for him. I presumed this was, in part, because he was beginning to catch up on his attempts to stay the course, keep his integrity in difficult circumstances.Christian receives the ideas offered to him gracefully and considers how or whether or not he will participate. Marietta has more to offer than either I or Isabelle, because in her work, as judge, she offers ideas and solutions.Isabelle prepares lunch from the food we bought in Balon on the way home from the Colorado Plateau. I have never had a lunch like this one. “I try to cook in the Provence way,” she said. Slices of eggplant were cooked in butter and olive oil with salt and thyme for seasoning. Slivers of red pepper were cooked the same way. Zucchini squash was cut into long thin sticks and also cooked in butter and olive oil, with fresh lemons squeezed on top of the squash, soaking it in juice. With this we had a terrine au campagne that we bought in a world famous boucherie (butcher shop). This shop sends its products all over the world. The terrine we bought was a wonderful combination of “je ne sais pas.” Even Christian and Isabelle said “je ne sais pas” to this terrine. But it was wonderful with a multi-grained French bread and slices of the traditional baguettes.The butcher shop had its own postcard with a picture of the butcher standing behind the counter with sausages dangling around him hanging from the ceiling. The words on the postcard were Products de Banon (Alpes de Haute-Provence) specialitiés de Saucisses (Franiches, Seches, Parfuéas) Fromage de Banon Products Régionaux.As an aside, food here is very expensive. A chicken cost us twelve Euros. Clearly the French farmer is protected from American competition. The thinking is that, if the French farmers are dislocated from their farms by foreign competition, the government will have to support them. So the higher price on food is a way of taxing the French people. They will have to pay the price, either in the price of food or in higher taxes. The land remains productive. France remains independent of other countries supplying their food. I don’t see how this will change, even though it is a severe disadvantage to the French consumer and the general quality of life in France.Back to lunch, we had a variety of soft cheeses, mostly goat cheese for lunch. For desert we had sliced fresh fruit; melons, apricots, peaches, and nectarines with ice cream. We sat at the table expanding our life expectancy, according to Christian’s father, til 4:00 PM talking.At four Christian went with us to the cybercafé to help us check our E-mails. Christian and I shared a beer and Christian generously offered me a fine Cuban cigar. This was an El Ray Del Mundo Robesto, Choix Seupreme.  It is the first category of cigar from Cuba.  It has a four band rating out of five.Christian had the special cigar lighter that spit out a flame, like a torch.  It was dangerous, but effective.  One used it to light the cigar by holding the cigar in one’s hand.  Lighting it this way did not require puffing on it to get it started.  It was rather more like welding, than lighting the cigar in the traditional way.  I took my first puff and Christian and Marietta exploded, “Don’t inhale!”  I didn’t.  It was just a big toke.  It took awhile, but I got what Christian meant by savoring the cigar.  It is much like sipping scotch whiskey straight, just a small amount is enough.  It took a good thirty minutes to completely smoke the cigar.  As I put it out, I felt a slight buzz.  It was a good feeling.  Christian said he felt a feeling of well-being smoking a cigar.  I just felt slightly drunk.Christian and I went upstairs to see how Marietta was getting on with the computer.  She was doing fairly well, considering that the French keyboard was different than the American version.  Christian took over typing for her and expedited the remaining part of the process.  The life of a pharmacological researcher makes Christian exceedingly competent with E-mail and the French computer. It seemed to all of us a miracle that we could check our E-mails in Buis-les-Baronnies en Provence. One sad note was that my elderly Aunt Jane was in the hospital from a stroke.  It made me wonder when people would be saying about me, “perhaps it is near his time.”   She is about ninety.We went home to Isabelle, who had just awakened from a nap.  Today Isabelle confirmed my theory. She was exhausted and for the first time a bit out of sorts.  She had been short and impatient with Christian, but after her nap, she seemed to regain her form.OUR VERY, VERY BAD DAYWhen I awoke, Marietta and Isabelle had gone to the March.  Charlotte and her friends were coming to lunch. This included Charlotte, Vincent, Delphine and Guilliam. This would take a lot of shopping.Just as I finished my breakfast and sat down to write, Christian came into the kitchen for his coffee and breakfast.  This was around 10:00 a.m., early for Christian on vacation.  As he began to fix his coffee, we heard a car drive up in front of our house and honk the horn.  “They’re back,” we said together.  And I was thinking, “They want their pack mules to carry in the groceries.”Not so.  I heard a male voice say something French through the door.  I opened it and Jean Pierre bounded in, carrying Isabelle’s straw shopping bags.  (These bags are useful because they are oval shaped, smaller at the bottom and larger at the top, with strong handles.)  He went immediately to Christian and talked hurriedly with him in French.  I took the bags from him and began taking the groceries out of the bags.  From his hand gestures, I could tell something wasn’t right, but I assumed it was with him.  He was gone, as quickly as he came.Something was wrong, but not with him.  Marietta had lost her keys.  Here is was at last, my graduating moment.  How I handled this could crown me in glory, like Emmanuel’s concern and helpful assistance to Isabelle’s lost watch crisis anointed him as a prince of a guy, which he naturally is and I am not.Of course, my instinct is to feel threatened and storm down to find Marietta and become the complaining long-suffering husband, who is a suffering hero for living with Marietta often losing something.  That is my natural curmudgeon spirit coming out.As this impulse flowed into my body, I observed it.  There were some good elements to this impulse.  This was a real threat and responding to it as such is not inappropriate.  I could feel energizing…My instinct to sigh heavily and roll my head along with my eyes.  I knew that was wrong.  The frustration I felt at wanting to help and be effective, knowing that I had little to offer also seemed appropriate.  To manage this, I created a theory that the keys weren’t really lost.  They were locked in the car.  So we would have to call Hertz to bring another set.As soon as we put away the groceries, we got on our white horse, Christian’s Renault Lamina, and rushed to the Marche, where we found masses of people clogging the streets and no Marietta or Isabelle, nor the car.  Christian let me out into the crowd, while he looked for a place to park.That was a mistake.  I wandered the Marche aimlessly and the best parking place Christian could find was at our house in our garage.While I was going through a parking lot, looking for somebody’s car I recognized, I came upon the Renault Lamina parked, blocking other cars.  Oh, at last, Christian decided to park there and wait for someone to find him.  I walked over to the passenger side, stuck my head in the door.  The driver turned to look at me and he wasn’t Christian.  I said, “Excuse me,” which I’m sure he did not understand and I walked away feeling more lost, and more incompetent and more out of place.I turned back toward the Marche, hearing the beat of large drums.  I wandered toward them for no particular reason, still intently searching for someone or some car I recognized.  Before I knew it, I was walking in a procession with the drummers, who were snaking their way through the Marche in order to draw a crowd.  One of the drummers banged and snaked directly toward me.  Bum-BA-Bum Ba Bum – right in my face.  Never have I found music more irritating!I continued my wandering, until I saw Marietta’s straw hat.  All was well.  “The keys had been found and now I’ve found you,” Marietta said. “I left the key in a booth in the Marche. We drove home, found Christian and he told me that you were in the Marche looking for us.”This was anti-climatic for me.  My theory about locking the keys in the car was incorrect.  I had no audience that I could demonstrate my patience to.  This did not seem to be my moment to demonstrate my new found spirit.Marietta was smiling disarmingly as if all was well.  I decided my best tact was to let it be so.  When I returned to the house, I tested my key-locked-in-the-car-theory.  With the Renault, the only locking device is the button on the key that radio’s a signal to the car to lock and unlock.  I tried to see if one might lock the key in the car somehow inadvertently and it was not possible.  Good for Renault.  They know who they are dealing with.The lunch was delightful.  We sat at the table talking, eating and drinking, four middle-aged parent types and four early twenty year olds from 1:00 P.M. until 4:30 P.M.  Though I missed most of the dinner conversation, I could tell through body language that Christian was holding court and Vincent, Charlotte’s boyfriend, was being appropriately solicitous.One of the things that kept us together at the table was the food.  Most of it was in salad form.  One was Salad Nicoise, a potato, olives, green beans, tomatoes & tuna salad.  The other was a rice and tuna salad, and another was a fruit salad of melons, apricots, nectarines and berries, soaked in peche (peach) liquor.  Then there was the fromage (cheese) and the pain (bread) and a variety of cookies that we nibbled on, after we finished the main meal.  Oh, I forgot, and two types of wine, rouge and rose. That probably helped to keep us together at a table for so long, as much as anything else.After the meal, we began the picture taking ritual.  Marietta and I both thought something was amiss with the setting of the digital camera.  I began to mess with it and I erased two week’s worth of pictures with one push of the menu button.Marietta was still smarting from losing the keys, so having me to play the goat was too good to pass up.  “How could you” and so on lasted a painful five minutes.  “The camera should make it more difficult to do,” I said in my defense. “I have it set right now.”Isabelle came to the rescue.  “I will send you copies of my video.”The final part of this very, very bad day happened as Marietta and Isabelle were getting their purses out of the trunk of the car when we got home after going to Buis for a glace’. Marietta closed the trunk on Isabelle’s head.OUR “AH HA” ON PLATEAU de VERCORSThe next day was our trip to the Vercors Plateau.  It was a two hour drive from Buis. We got up at 7:00 a.m. with the plan to leave at 7:30.  We left at 8:00 a.m. and arrived there at 10:00 a.m.  The drive was scenic and difficult, with three mountain passes and their accompanying switchbacks every 100 yards.When we arrived at Colder Rousset, we were startled by how cold it was.  A front came through in the night.  It had been hot there just as in the rest of France, but now it was fifteen degrees centigrade at the bottom of the mountain, 1300 meteres above sea level.  It was less than 10 deg. Centigrade at the top of the mountain at 2,000 meters.We met Isabelle’s brother, Olive and his wife, Veronique.   They had been waiting and were eager to get on with our walk.  This was to be a long four hour walk to a Roman quarry and four hours back, with lunch on the Plateau from out of our collective sac ‘a dos.We took the ski lift up the mountain.  This took much of the ordeal out of the assent.  Once on the Plateau, the vistas were amazing.  The quarry was on an ancient Roman road from Die to Grenoble.  The path from the lift to our destination was lightly uphill.  It was easy to get lost on this plateau, so we were well-armed with a detailed map and a compass.I wish I could describe the sights from this Plateau. The town of Die was below the expanse of vertical rock. Unlike other mountains in France, there were some flowers in the Vercors and some green grasses.  Sheep were grazing here.  We came on two separate herds accompanied by dogs and Shepherds.  About one hour into our walk, we came upon a rock garden.  Someone or ones had spent time in this space making rock statues and rock sculptures from the plentiful stones that covered much of the ground here.The site of these rocks created a spirit that was a combination of whimsy and serious thought.  Someone had enjoyed their creative spirit here and had created something that resembled a cemetery.We stopped for lunch before we got to the quarry.  We pulled out of our sac ‘a dos dried mangoes, dried pineapple, and the best yogurt I have ever tasted.  It was German yogurt.   It was creamier, yet tart with the fruit (in my case, peche) as its primary sweetener.  It was better than my Dannon peche yogurt that we bought in Buis.  In France, Veronique said, “There are so many yogurts in the grocery stores to choose from that it is difficult for me to find my favorite one among all of them.”We had hot tea with a separate cup for each of us, sliced fresh cantaloupe from two large melons, a sack of peaches, nectarines and apricots.  Plastic wrapped fromage (cheese) emerged from the sac ‘a dos.  I carried along with a small baguette.  After lunch and a short rest, we walked on to the quarry.  In fact, Veronique and I were so intent on our conversation, that we walked past it.  The rocks in the quarry looked much like other rock along the trail, except for their shape.  It takes a second look to see that one is in the shape of a broken column and others are perfect rectangles.  The stone looks like very good, but aged marble.  We all wondered how such large masses of stone were transported down this mountain.Marietta and I were exhausted, when we reached the quarry and so ready to return to the comfort of a car seat.  Isabelle and Oliver wanted to walk on to the top of the next slope. Veronique was willing to go with them for part of the way.  Marietta and I lay down in the shade of a rock and took a nap, an hour of deep sleep. When they returned, we were glad to begin our trek home.When we were about fifteen minutes on our return, we were passed by a young couple walking briskly in the opposite direction, carrying no packs, only a water bottle.  About five minutes later, we came upon official papers laying in the path.  One was a registration for a car; another was a French driver’s license.  Then I found a Visa card.  Since the name and address were on the driver’s license and the registration, Olive said he would send it to them by mail. Veronique looked at the picture on the driver’s license and recognized the woman of the couple we had just passed.Olive resolved to run to catch the hikers and take these papers and credit card back to the them.  Isabelle and Veronique would wait for him and since Marietta and I were tired, Isabelle suggested that we walk on slowly and they would catch up soon.The path was mostly downhill and we walked at a good pace.  The couple proved to be elusive.  They were walking very fast, so there was some distance between them and our party.  When Olive got to the quarry, he couldn’t find them, but since he could see miles in front on the path, he knew that they must be there exploring.  After searching for them, he found them and the papers did indeed belong to the girl.Well, that was chivalry gone too far for me.  I could never match that.  Olive was indeed a benevolent, (a good fellow) certainly a pier to Emanuel.  I was not one of them.  I would certainly have mailed it to her.  I probably would have asked the people camping at a mountain hut we passed along the way whether or not it belonged to them, but I was so exhausted, it would never have occurred to me to chase them down.  I was disappointed in myself that I was clearly not in the league of Emanuel and Olive.A note about Olive.  He was also in the class of my cousin, Jerry Vestal, along with Emanuel, as a non-curmudgeon male. He clearly adored his sister, Isabelle, as she did him. He also was clearly happily married to Veronique., who was a beautiful, charming woman, currently learning Italian and Arabic in her spare time.  They met, when she was organizing a small theatre group to act in plays for the elderly in nursing homes.  She was a friend of Emanuel, who had agreed to be part of the theatre troop, and he brought Olive along to join as well. The rest to me seemed “heureux pour toujourr” (happily ever after).My cousin, Jerry, could trace his generous lineage back to my Aunt Margie, through his father.  I did not have a clear path to anyone in my heritage like that.  My father was generous and loyal, but controlling and rigid.  My mother was kind and caring and did many wonderful things for many people like Aunt Margie, Jerry and Olive, but she was also extremely driven and disciplined.As I was beginning to realize that I didn’t have the genes to belong to this group, I was saved by Marietta, who did.“I realize what makes a curmudgeon,” she said.“You do,” I said, amazed.“Yes, it is being pushed beyond your limits.”“I think you’ve got something there.  But how did you come to recognize that?”, I wondered.“I’m a curmudgeon, a grande curmudgeon.  I’ve been complaining now for an hour.  In this beautiful place, nothing is beautiful to me.  I’m mad at Isabelle for making us late.  We won’t get home til past midnight.”“You’re worrying about time?” I said shocked. “You, who’s always late, never on time.”“I know it,” she said.  “I sound just like you and the reason is that my feet hurt.  I’m exhausted.  I’ve reached my limit and Isabelle and her brother keep on going and I feel like they think we are wimps.  This is not a pleasant walk.  This is an endurance test and I’m failing.  I didn’t sign up for this.”“Yes, you did,” I said.  “What did you think an eight hour walk in the mountain would be?”“Perhaps I should have known, but that was before I had a blister on my big toe.  That was before I was sunburned, even with sunscreen.  That was before I walked six hours - seven miles one way.  Now I’m a curmudgeon just like you and it’s because I have reached my limit.”“Yes, that’s it all right.  You do that to me all the time.  I tell you that I’ve reached my limit and you seem to take that as a challenge that you accept.  You use it as an opportunity to prove that your feminine charms work and you push me further, knowing that I can’t resist you.”“Yes, I do that to you sometimes.”“You admit to this!”  I was incredulous. She never confesses to a sin, apologizes easily or admits to mistakes.“Yes, now that I see what happens on this side. Isabelle is playing my role and I’m playing yours.  The only reason you are not, is because you are in better shape than me and I reached my limit before you did.”“Yes,” I agreed. “I think that’s right.  I’m trying to challenge myself to be less of a curmudgeon.  I think for a time we were locked in these roles of you pushing me beyond my limits and me resenting you for that and you resenting me because I was so difficult to push.”“That’s right, except it is more than that,” she said.  “It often becomes a power struggle and your answer is “no” to any request or invitation I offer because it comes from me.”“I suppose that has happened,” I acquiesced.  “But you have set so many precedents.  I don’t trust you to respect my limits.”“Well, sometimes I don’t,” she said.  “They are silly.  I don’t see why you cannot wait one more minute for us to go when we are at a party and I haven’t finished a conversation.”“The reason for that,” I fired back, “is because I push myself as far as I can and then some more, because I agree with you.  I should be more sociable, more flexible and I try, but when I reach my limit, I want to go.  The fact that I tell you that it has past the point of pleasure, past the point of tolerance and is moving well into pain and you ignore me feels insulting to me.  It feels like you don’t care, don’t care how I feel.”“I don’t,” she admitted. “I think you should be able to handle a social situation, staying longer will give you more practice.  It will do you good.  That’s what I think.”“No, it will do just the opposite,” I said emphatically. “It will make me determined not to even go and not to trust you in these situations to consider me.”“It’s a pain to deal with you,” she said.  “It’s like having a child pull on your skirt all the time. I don’t feel I should have to put up with that.”“And Isabelle shouldn’t have to put up with you complaining about time and exhaustion. She gave you every opportunity to not go. She let you take a nap when you wanted.  She fed you when you were hungry.  You had informed consent, so shut up.  Now how does that feel?”“I get it,” she said. “That’s what I do to you and you are right this time and I’m right when I do it to you.  All limits are stupid and can always be challenged.”I felt gratified that she got this. “That’s right. We have a right to our limits.  We all reach a point where we have no more to give.  We are out of gas.  You’ve reached that point and you should take care of yourself and we, who love you, should help.”“I don’t do that for you, do I?” she said.“No, you don’t.  You make me explain myself and justify how I feel.  Sometimes I don’t have a good answer.  Even when I do, I do not want to have to justify myself.  If I do offer a good explanation, it is never good enough for you.”“I suppose not.” She admitted.  “I play Isabelle to your Christian and we get locked into that.”“I’m trying to move out of this crust that confines me into curmudgeondom,” I said.  “What are you doing?”“I can change, too,” She said defensively.“You mean you think I’m changing?” I said, stunned by her implication.“Well, yes,” she said. “I think it’s obvious.  Before you always reach your limits, before I do mine. So I never discovered this place before.  It helped me see what you’ve been saying.”“For years.”“Yes, you don’t have to rub it in when I’m beginning to understand.”“It helps me,” I offered, “when I can find something in the activity that I want to do.  If I have a personal agenda inside or along with your agenda.“For example, it helped me go to Italy to have an agenda to go to Cortona and see Frances Mayes’ home that she wrote about in Under the Tuscan Sun.  I had a fantasy that I wanted to live out, and I did.  That was good for me.  It gave the trip a purpose for me.  It was a bit anti-climatic when I got there. Frances didn’t come out of her house down her drive with open arms and invite us for a Tuscan dinner.  She didn’t take me for a tour of her olive groves.  But thinking about that place and Frances and her lover there made that trip more interesting for me.”“My fantasy trip,” Marietta said, “was that Isabelle and I would go shopping together in Argnon or Aix or Gap or Orange.  Isabelle’s fantasy was to hike from the mountains navel to its crown.  While a thirty minute walk to the crown would be fine with me, an eight hour march was not what I ever imagined.”I came to Isabelle’s defense (a mistake).  “Isabelle is like me.  She likes to go where people are not.  I imagine travel, like Hemingway.  I want to go to the out-of-the-way, undiscovered place, the place that is de classe (out of favor).  You want to go to the “in” place, where everybody goes.  The crowds don’t bother you.  While Isabelle thinks the Champs Elysees is a silly place to go, that is exactly where you want to go.”“No, not this trip,” Marietta said.  “I wanted to go to St. Troupe where my friend Anne gave me the name of neat stores.”“We can’t afford to add on to our house, travel to Europe and a shopping spree for you in St. Troupe. My back can’t afford to carry back that stuff in the luggage.  Isabelle is not as materialistic as you.  Why can’t you enjoy the road less traveled, the place that Madison Avenue is not selling?”Now I was really in trouble.  Marietta answered with a strong voice.  “You can have your limits and I’m supposed to accept them only because they are yours, but there is something always wrong with my fantasies.  Just like you wanted to go on your pilgrimage to Cortona, I have always wanted to walk down Fifth Avenue.  I did it.  It was anti-climatic.  I couldn’t afford anything at Tiffany’s, but I bought a dress I still have from Bloomingdales. I’m glad I had that fantasy.  These dreams are never what we imagine, but they keep us going.  You imagine that you will publish this book about our trip, but probably you won’t, but the dream gives you the opportunity to write, and you love that.  Why should we have to justify our fantasies to each other?  Why can’t we help each other live them out?”“So you will join me with another woman in a three way sex adventure?”  I wondered.“You are terrible.”“I get your point.  You shouldn’t have to justify your imagination anymore than I should my limits.  If you can respect my limits, I can try to join your dreams with fantasies of my own.  But when walking and looking in the big cities is your dream, you are going to have to help me find a comfortable hotel lobby, where I can sit and write.”“I’ll try to do that.  I know how I can have an agenda now.  I’m past being able to look for wildflowers, but this is good conditioning for me.  That’s how I can look at it.  I’m glad we had this talk. I’m beginning to feel better.”We were way ahead of the others by this time and were afraid that we might take the wrong path, so we waited.  It took about forty-five minutes, but they eventually caught up to us.  We walked on further together.  I was intent on getting to the bottom.  I pushed on aware of my sore legs, feet, shoulder, hip and back.  Olive kept pace with me.  The women fell behind a bit.I felt it coming on again, as soon as Olive suggested we stop next to the edge of a cliff and have a snack.  This suggestion had two bad consequences for me.  First, it would mean a longer time before I sat down in the car seat.  And second, I had to look over the edge of the cliff and watch my fear of heights grow and feel my stomach move up in my throat. I joined the contest with Olive and lost very quickly as Olive ignored my protests, took off his sac ‘a dos, sat down and began to prepare a snack.  The others followed him to the cliff’s edge.  I lay down away from the edge, head on my pack, eyes closed, meditating to manage my fear and to back myself away from a contest with Olive.It seemed easier for me to be tolerant and flexible and a non-curmudgeon. when a woman threw down the gauntlet, but when Olive did, I felt my curmudgeon spirit rise.  Or perhaps, it was given back to me when Marietta seemed to releases it a few minutes before.When we reached the lift, it was closed.  We began our descent down a path that was marked as a green ski slope. We had walked only a short distance when we saw a wild animal that looked like a small deer, but had only two horns.  It looked like an antelope, but none of us were sure that antelopes existed in the Alps.  It could have been a wild mountain goat.  It watched us walk for a while and disappeared.Marietta took this as her cue to grab my arm and begin running down the hill. We raced away from the others, like horses running to the barn.  When we got to the car, we flung open its doors and sat down on the soft seats with back support.  AHHH!!!OUR LAST DAYWe were exhausted when we got home at about 12:15 A.M.  Christian was awake, glad to see us and not at all surprised that we were late.  I drove home on corkscrew roads in the dark and I tried to control my energized curmudgeon spirit by going straight to bed.We were amazed that we awoke the next day with only some soreness, but otherwise back to our old-selves.  And we woke up fairly early for us, around 9:00 a.m.  Isabelle had planned for us to meet with another psychologist about an hour away from Buis. We were happy, when these plans fell through. All of us seemed content to sit about the house.  Mercifully, the temperature had moderated and we were able to enjoy the view of the Mt. Venteux with our doors and windows open.We spent the morning reading, writing and snacking.  We ate lunch at 1:30 and sat at the table commiserating about how similar our marriages were, how Isabelle and Marietta seem to push Christian and my limits and how we had become locked in our roles and a constant and repeating power struggle that had become so familiar to all of us.  This discussion lasted until 4:00 p.m., another two and a half hours that extended our life expectancy, according to Christian’s father.None of us slept that well our last night.  Marietta and I believed that, for us, it was because we were afraid of leaving the womb of Isabelle and Christian.  Perhaps our collective discussion upset the equilibrium of Isabelle and Christian’s marriage.  And they, too, may have been afraid to leave us in some way.But pack and leave, we did.  There was no way to say our thank-yous and good-byes adequately.  We did our best.  We will miss Christian and Isabelle.  We will miss Mont Ventoux and Mt. St. Julian, the lavender blues and smell, the mountain passes that gave us “Sound of Music” views.  There is no way to thank Madame Faccherine and her family for their kindnesses.  We left that to Isabelle and Christian.  Somehow we should have done more to express our gratitude and to give our blessings back to these people and this land.  We didn’t.  We got in our car and left, feeling the sense of inadequacy and emptiness in our hearts.At the same time, we were ready to return home to our responsibilities, our dog and cat, our home and contractor, our constituents who we need to need us. We had learned a lot this trip.  Marietta and I were grateful for the break in the stereotype of our relationship.  We were pleased with this insight and the compassion we had gained.  The rest of the trip without Isabelle and Christian lay in front of us and we were apprehensive.The first night away from Buis, I had a dream.  I was trying to make love to my ex-wife.  She wasn’t interested, as usual.  She turned to me, crying and said the reason she wasn’t interested was that she was ashamed and frightened.  “I have a penis,” she said.  “I have always hidden it from you.  I was afraid that if you saw it, you wouldn’t want to be with me.  I didn’t think you would accept me, if you knew.”I told her that it was okay with me, but I wasn’t sure how I would react when I saw it.  “I’m so glad you can accept me,” she said.  And she pulled me toward her.  I saw it (her penis).  It was hanging on her hip.  It was a curiosity to me, but it wasn’t repulsive.  My excitement was a bit diminished, but I seemed to have enough enthusiasm for continue the original project.  Then, I awoke.For much of the day, I puzzled over what this dream might mean.  Of course, I knew my ex-wife had many reasons to be uninterested in me, and this was certainly not the one.  I am certain she didn’t have a penis.Eventually I came to a more comfortable understanding of the dream.  I was in fact repulsed by my own feminine side.  Weakness in myself has never been something I wanted to embrace.  There is something about my unique limited self that I think is repulsive.  So I do not show that side of myself often.  I’m afraid it will be rejected.  The problem is more with me than anybody else.  Can I accept this weird androgyny in myself?  Can I let my weakness assert itself?  Can respect that I do not know?  Perhaps I can accept my weakness if that was all there was to it, but can I affirm the strength in the weakness, the penis that seems to be a corollary to my feminine?  According to my interpretation of the dream, it says that I pout etre, perhaps, I can.That morning, while I was in the bathroom, I heard Marietta bark at me to hurry up.  It hurt my feelings for no reason I could think of.  It was not something she said, but it was the way she said it.  The offense was in the tone of her voice.How can I be so easily insulted by behavior that I use so much more often than she, meaning no offense when I raise my voice, as she did or when I playfully turn the screw of a critical sarcastic question.  I tease and communicate affection this way.  My sarcasm and teasing tone is one of the most enjoyable parts of my curmudgeon spirit.  Usually when I take such a tone, it is meant well.  I can take back more than I give and am glad for the verbal contest.I am reminded of John Gottman’s, “Four Horses of the Apocalypse” in a marriage.  Humiliating, sarcasm, harsh tones of voices are two of those horses.  Language with these harsh inflictions can become characteristic of some relationships.I could see it in an exchange I had with Christian about the luggage that Marietta and Isabelle take on trips.  We were enjoying our righteousness and advertising our suffering at Marietta’s and Isabelle’s expense.  But Marietta only had one bag.  Christian said beginning the contest.“Yes,” I replied.  “But you carried it upstairs. What did you think?”“That it had rocks in it.”“And empty bags to be filled with more junk for me to tote back,” I said.“Well Isabelle filled the whole trunk with her stuff, I just brought this small bag,” was his response.“And here is the transformer,” Marietta said in a tone that indicated she was getting defensive.  With those words, she handed me this heavy electronic box we bought at the hardware store to transform the French 22 volt current to the U. S. 110 volt current so that we could recharge our camera’s battery.  It was heavy.But probably heavier and more painful was the words Christian and I used to belittle our wives.  Fun is fun.  All humor has a butt of a joke, but too often I have “lovingly” teased Marietta and unintentionally pierced the skin.   Marietta, to survive living with me, has adopted this tone and the result is that we inadvertently become locked in a cycle of teasing that becomes hostility that can become just plain mean.That’s one of the problems with the curmudgeon spirit.  It is never too far from that line, where fun is no longer funny.  Watching my tone of voice requires a conscience-raising that is hard for me.  My tones just come with my words.  I don’t contemplate them, nor do I censor them.  I just speak what’s on my mind, the truth.That has always been my defense.  The truths, if you can’t take it, then too bad for you.  I say this and then I watch myself in my work, being careful with my tone and my words.  Oh, I tell the truth.  Psychotherapy without the truth can encourage pathology.  Good psychotherapy always speaks the truth in the context of love, compassion and understanding.  I have done that.  I should give Marietta that benefit of my kindness, when I speak the truth.The problem has been that Marietta and Isabelle have ignored their husband’s limits.  What defenses do Christian and I both with bad backs, have to protect us in our fears that these bags will demonstrate our ineptness, weakness and inadequacy.  We are afraid of their luggage and we can’t very well say that.  Certainly, it was no problem for either of us at eighteen, but truth be told, it is now.  Marietta and Isabelle both pulled their weight and then some.  It is difficult to talk about.  The airlines only allow four bags.  But we only took three.Is this what my dreams are about?  I can travel with Marietta, if I assert that my back hurts.  If I do, she will have compassion for me.  But I must tell her about this part of me that I feel so awkward about.  In this case, it is an old man’s aching back.  If I can have this conversation, perhaps I won’t need too much sarcasm or anger in my tone of voice.The next day we went in search of the famous French antique marche, the Brocante Marche.  What we found was a small grouping of flea market booths under a large shed, maybe twenty-five in number.  This was a flea market very much like what one might see in the states.  Old pictures, old shoes, old cooking utensils, some furniture, some clothes, some linens.  Marietta bought a tablecloth after haggling for 30 minutes.We found lunch at a Marche.  We bought a half cooked chicken and some fruit.  What we didn’t have was water.  On our way out of town, we stopped in a small market.  Marietta goes in for a bouteille d'eau, while I manned our double parked car.  She returned in a few minutes.  “I met the characters in Peter Maille’s book,” she said excitedly, as soon as she got into the car.  The owner was drinking Pastis with four other men.  This was a dark hole in the wall place.  I had to pay 1 Euro for the bottle in addition to what I would pay for the water.  He was rough.  Two women were together behind the counter.  They might have been his wife and daughter.  I don’t know.  Those men were feeling no pain and this is 2:30 in the afternoon on a Sunday.Our other encounter with the French poor was walking back from the Brocante Marche. An elderly man was shuffling behind a walker, a woman over seventy, presumably his wife, watched him carefully, as he struggled.  When we passed them, we looked in an open door.  It was a two room apartment that we imagined belonged to the couple.  One room contained a made bed and a commode. The other room was a small kitchen.We drove from Moneause to Isles de Sorgue.  Here three rivers came together in the center of this town.  Main Street was right beside the river.  Shops were on either side of the river.  This must be where the flea market booths had come, because there were more antique tchotchke’s for sale than I had ever seen anywhere else. Booths lined the street in front of a river park.  The booths contained products of high quality and much higher prices.  This was an Aspen kind of town, picturesque and expensive.We found a seat on a waist high wall that lined the river for our lunch.  We carved the chicken we just bought and a melon into pieces.  We ended our lunch with peaches and nectarines.  We had enough water left in the bottle to wash the chicken and fruit juices from our hands.  As we were engaged in the clean up process, we saw something happening on the river.  There were two boats, one painted blue and white, the other red and white that looked like a combination long-boat from the Louisiana bayou and a Venice gondola with a place for the gondolier to stand.  People used plastic milk cartons with the handles, the bottoms cut out, and turned upside down to bail out the boats.  One of the boats began to float higher in the water.  Honda outboard motors were installed in the boats keel, one per boat.  A crew of eight boarded each boat.  Crew members were dressed in white with large white trousers, loose in the crotch and legs, ending at mid-calf.The crew of the rouge boat wore the same outfit with a rouge sash tied around the waist. The crew of the blue boat wore a blue sash around the waist.  In the crotch of the pants on the right side just below the waist, was a thick pad.  Soon it became clear what this was for.  Poles, some ten feet long, were loaded on the boats.Two boys, about twelve, took their place on the platform in the back of each boat.  Each were handed their ten foot staff.  They stood their pole straight up, balanced it in the palm of the right hand and placed their right hand on the pad in the crotch and secured their hand with the extra cloth in the pant’s midsection.I’m not sure what they called this contest, but it was clear, by this time, that they were in for a joust with the boat, as the horse for the two combatants.Suddenly a voice yelled over the loud speaker, “Prete rouge?”The driver of the red boat waved his hand to signal no.  He headed his boat down river some more while the blue boat headed up river.  Then they turned to face one another.  The voice from the speaker roared again. “Rouge Prete.”  This time the driver waved back his assent.“Bleu Prete.”The driver of the blue boat acknowledged, yes, with his wave.  Then the boats headed slowly toward one another.  By this time the combatants had their poles fixed in the air and they had been equipped with a shield that was a square box with a square hole that would provide a good target for the lance.  The shield was lashed to the contestant so that when the lance found its target, something had to give.  If the boats continued on, one or both contestants would be pushed off their perch and into the water. On the first pass, both found the water. Several jousts between the red and blue boats followed with different contestants. The Bleu boat took an early lead in the best three out of three with the victorious bleu contestant taking on the next rouge challenger.  The bleu champion stayed on to take on two more opponents, until a girl, who seemed to be older dispatched him easily.  Then, she defeated another female challenger and then, a second female challenger busted her.The joists continued for about two hours.  The grandstands set for this occasion were half full.  At the end of the day, the blue boat won.  The serious joisting with well practiced strong men were the last matches of the day.  No one was physically injured, but there were perhaps a few bruised egos.   We felt lucky to be sitting along the river, just as this event was staged.It was about six o’clock when we left the Isles de Sorgues.  Marietta wanted to go to Fountain Varchluse.  I was ambivalent, but I acquiesced.  This was supposed to be a place of extraordinary geological interest.  A river poured out of the ground at the bottom of a mountain cliff.  As we drove into town, it became clear that parking would be a problem.  Thousands of cars filled several lots.  People walked in droves along the street.  The walk to the fountain was lined with Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge like tourist stuff.  The path to this fountain was clogged with people.  When we got to the place, where the water emerged from the ground, it was covered with boulders, with water rushing out among them.I was tired and I needed to go to the bathroom.  My limits were found.  I was quite pleased when Marietta’s limits were found as well.  We drove back to Avignon, agreeing that we had taken on one too many places, when we went to Fountaine Varvluse.I proposed a rule that I learned from Jerry Lee, a psychologist colleague of mine in Nashville.  She suggests that in any co-parenting decision, that the most conservative parent rules.  In our case, that would mean that we respect the person whose limits have been reached first, or we listen to the fears of whoever is afraid.This rule would require a great deal of trust for Marietta, since I was the most likely one to reach a limit first and my fears were more quickly stimulated.  The rule worked in Marietta’s favor, when we were semi-lost and may or may not stop and ask directions.  If I didn’t abuse Marietta’s trust, this principle might be useful.It would be tested the next day, our first trip to Avignon.  We drove across the Rhone from Villeneuve, found an underground parking lot and lost all orientation, when the parking garage road circled us down into its bowels.  We found a parking place, an exit stairway and the light of day easily, but we had no idea where we were or where we had left our car.  We were inside the city walls on a street that was not on any map. We went straight, then we turned right.  Then we turned right again.  Then we turned left and we found Rue de Republic, a street on the map.This satisfied Marietta, but not me.  I wanted to trace our way back to the entrance of the parking garage to make sure we could find our way back.  Without our rule, this would have been a fight.  If Marietta won, I would be nervous the rest of the day, wanting to get back to the car to manage my anxiety.  If I won, Marietta would feel resentful that I got my way.  Here the rule won.  It took ten minutes, but we found our way back to the parking garage door that had been our exit and that, when we returned, would be our entrance to the garage.Both of us were pleased with how this rule worked.  Marietta was glad to have a less anxious companion and I was glad to proceed on into Avignon.Avignon, in July, is an amazing city.  There is street entertainment everywhere.  There are plays, operas, recitals, concerts, dances, etc.  This is called the Festival.  There are Festival events and OFF Festival events.  The Festival Events are often expensive.  The OFF Festival Events are free or at most, 15 Euros.Every plaza had several street performers performing simultaneously, each on their own corner of the Plaza.  There may be music in one place, and juggling in another.  In some corners, acts trade off, each doing a thirty minute set.We were walking along a small street, Tenuhenir, when we heard piano music pouring out of a small storefront.  We saw the sign, Libre, on the door, and walked in.  It was a small theatre with about twenty seats.  The stage was backed with black cloth.  The windows were covered as well.  The light on the stage shined on two young women, one, no more than seventeen, holding a violin and watching the other twenty year old play the piano.  She was playing a medley of classical standards that seemed to leap from her fingers like a jazz pianist, changing from one mood to another.  The younger girl would get ready to join in and then the older did not give her an entry point.  Exasperated, the younger one sat down.  When she did get her chance to play, she was brilliant.  Her body and fingers seemed to be swept into the music and she carried us with her.  Turns out these girls were sisters and the pianist was wonderful, but when the younger violinist began to play, you knew why she had not let her in before.And this was just one of hundreds of moments like this for visitors to Avignon.  Marietta and I felt as if we had walked into the living room of these sisters, while they played and squabbled at the same time. The possibilities for this kind of serendipity in Avignon in July seemed endless to us.  We had dinner that night in an outdoor café, serenaded by flute music from a group of Navajo Indians.We couldn’t help wonder how something like this could be duplicated in the U.S..  First, the artists would need the support of patrons and the government.  The setting in the U.S. should be would need to be a place of low humidity and few mosquitoes.  It would be a place that attracted crowds.  We automatically thought of Park City, Utah, which hosts the Sundance Film Festival in January.  Why not a Sundance Drummer Festival?  In the summer, the Wasatch Mountains are cool, dry and no bugs, plenty of venues.  The only thing lacking is patrons and government support.  Clearly this is an example of “build it, they will come.” At least, this was Marietta’s and my opinions.The night before we left Avignon to return to Marseilles and our return trip home, I had a dream.  I dreamed that we came home to our house which was being remodeled, painted, cabinets installed in the kitchen, floors refinished, etc.  I dreamed that the paint colors were rather vivid, but acceptable.  The fans were hung from the ceiling, but there were many more of them than I had anticipated.  One was two fans on one pole.  The higher fan had two very fat blades.  I was not sure what I thought of that.  It was certainly more than I bargained for.  Then, there was a tiled roof over a wood box next to the fireplace. This was not in the plans at all.  The tiles were a strange amalgam of European clay tiles, some flat, some semi-circular, some gold, some bright blue, some green, some silver.  This was awful.  I didn’t know whether to show this or hide it from Marietta.  If I couldn’t hide it from her, I wasn’t sure how to present it.  Oh, I thought. We can just paint the roof tiles one color.To me this dream meant turbulence at the boundary.  While I dreaded the demands of our life in Nashville, this house remodeling, my practice, the demands of daily life, I felt prepared to return.  If the worst came, we could paint the tiles.Marietta and I had began our re-entry fights.  Why can’t we have some routine in our vacation?” I asked.  This the first line of a discussion we have had many times.The expected answer was, “Because I want a vacation from routine.”“Your routine is awful,” I replied.  “I understand why you want a break from 6:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. days.  But my routine serves me well.  I feel like I come home from vacation with ten more pounds, higher blood pressure and cholesterol, a higher resting pulse and my back worse.  Vacations ought to be good for you.  I’m not going to eat bread, drink wine or have desert for a week.”“I’ll give up bread and desert, but I want my half glass of wine with dinner,” Marietta said.“Yeah, but on vacation, why can’t we get up in the cool of the day at 7:30 or 8:00 and exercise while it feels good, have lunch at noon, take nap at the hottest part of the day, 4:00 or 4:30, go do something else, have a late dinner, go to bed at 12:00.  Why can’t we do that on vacation?  I would feel a lot better.”“Maybe if we stayed in one place for six weeks I could do that,” Marietta said.  “But on vacation I want to avoid routines.  I want to experience new things, go places I’ve never seen before and sometimes that takes the whole day.”“Discipline brings health,” I said.  “And discipline must be served.”“I’m not going on vacation to be disciplined.”I wasn’t sure I could serve discipline on a vacation either.  I sure as hell couldn’t without Marietta’s support, which I would probably never get.  This was not a real discussion.  This was my ambivalence and fear about the end of our vacation.  I felt myself going through the paces on our last day of vacation, a trip to the coast, through the French Marshland, cowboy and wild horse country, home to bullfights, churches that looked as if they came from Spain, herds of people on the beach, hot.  I clearly wasn’t interested.  I wanted to go home.  I was just like a horse headed back to the barn, anything in my way was an obstacle, not a resource.I could tell how much I valued home by the fears that came into my head.  I was afraid that the mediation between the British Airways ticket counter employees and their airline would strand us, even though the mediation wouldn’t begin for two days.  And it was only mediation, not a strike.  I was afraid there might be a fire in the hotel and I looked carefully at the evacuation route.  I suddenly felt claustrophobic in my hotel room.  I was afraid I wouldn’t sleep.  I was afraid I would sleep through the alarm.As we were leaving, I was angry at the French for speaking French.  I was angry at the French bureaucracy.  I was angry at my own ignorance.  The best thing about all this was that I knew that my anger had little to do with Marietta.  It had to do with loving my home, my country, my town, my state, my friends, my clients, my house, my backyard.  I wanted to be there now.  Being away from home for almost a month in, a foreign country, where the language was not mine, the road signs unfamiliar, where I knew two people out of millions, had lost all appeal for me.  Avignon was nice, but ….And this is perhaps the best part of the trip. This temper, this fear of mine tells me about what I love about home.  I love my secretary, my bedroom, my dog, even my cat.  I love the home we are completing, the friends I want to have over for dinner, the long conversations with food and wine that will be in english.  I love my church, my colleagues at Vanderbilt. I love the Community Psychologist Journal that I sometimes contribute to.  I love Nashville.  I love my family.  I love my trees, those in my yard, on my land and those that hover over the streets of towns and cities all over the south.  I am curious about what this unusually cool wet spring and summer in Nashville will do to our usually beautiful fall colors.I want to get back to my story, my client’s stories.  I want to read about the Titans football.  I want to catch up on the news.  I want to hear voices of my friends laughing and crying.  I want to learn what happened to the court case I testified in before I left.  I want to see what the flowers are doing in our garden.  I even want to hear the bad news from our contractor about how this remodeling project is coming.I realize that my grandfather was right.  That the secret to happiness was loving what you have to do.  And I do.  I love my obligations at home.  I love my clients.  I am pleased and honored that they need me.  I am excited to sit in my therapist’s chair.  I am eager to catch up with the couples who consult me.  It is a privilege for me to do what I do.  I listen to the American Airline pilot announce, “We realize you have a choice in air travel and we appreciate your choice to fly with us.”I realize my clients, friends and family have many choices and I am blessed they chose to include me in them.There are many things I do not admire about my country.  I dislike the wake made by the swagger and arrogance of the Southern Americans in a foreign country with their accent and posture.  And the sound of my voice trying to speak French is first among those I dislike.  I don’t like my country’s sense that everything is a crisis. We must go to war before summer in Iraq.  We can’t wait for diplomacy.  We will miss our window of opportunity.  This is silly nonsense in a country like France, where history is measured in thousands of years, not decades.There are, though, many things about my country that I do appreciate.  In France I saw very few people of color.  In Nashville, I see the colors of many races.  Though France and other European countries encourage their people to speak many languages, I don’t think, they do as good a job at appreciating and including people of color in their culture, as we do.  Not that racism and prejudice, isn’t a serious problem in our country. It is, but we are trying and we are improving and we are the better for that.Another thing I love about my country is that we Americans do not give up easily.  We use rules like a good Rabi does.  We appreciate the spirit of a rule and bend the latter to serve the spirit.  That is why we can change things. We can make decisions.  Though we have committees, we don’t have quite so many, I think.  Our discussions about decisions don’t last quite so long.  Though I wish we would have more of a sense of history and our context, I’m glad Americans still have faith that we can make a difference.

Feel The Rain

Chapter OnePreparing for the Journey The curmudgeon is off again with Marietta, this time to France, Caen, Nashville’s sister city east of Paris, Paris for several days and Isabelle and Christian’s country home in Féricy east of Paris.I’m doing some homework for the trip. No, I’m not learning French as I should. I am reading three books, David McCullough The Great Journey, Marilyn Yalom’s How The French Invented Love and Camilla Paglia’s Images.Bob Dylan observed that “some people feel the rain and some people just get wet.” When it comes to art and culture I’m one of those who just gets wet and I want to see if I can go to Paris and feel the rain.I am reading McCullough’s history of Americans in Paris in the nineteenth century to understand why Americans find Paris so fascinating, in hopes that I can too. I’m reading Yalom’s book about France’s influence on the construct of love to better understand the French culture and the personality of its people. I am reading Paglia’s book to see if I can open my closed mind to art.First let’s focus on the art part of my quest.In Camille Paglia’s book Images; she says that there are twenty-nine works of art that, if you see them, will change your life. “What hooey” comes to my curmudgeon mind, but my logical mind says to myself, “You are an ignorant Arkansas boy with a closed mind and a bad attitude. Millions of people find art fascinating. Why don’t you?”Well I accept the challenge. I will open my mind (or try to) and see if I can be moved by anything other than pornography.As part of my pre-trip homework, I am traveling to Springfield, Utah with John and Rita Lindell, both professed art lovers, John an engineer who minored in Art History, Rita who fell in love with John and over forty years has become an art expert and collector.Their mission impossible, if they choose to accept it, is to invite me to look through their eyes as we tour a famous collection of Russian art displayed at a museum in Springfield. It seems that some thirty or more years ago, the principal of Springfield High, as a young man served his Mormon mission in Russia and while there bought several, then inexpensive, pieces of Russian art. He contributed this art to the local high school and since that time each proceeding graduating class raised money to purchase more Russian art. Now Springfield, Utah has an impressive (we’ll see about that) collection of Russian art.I am hoping that John and Rita can pry open my eyelids at least a bit so that I can allow this art to touch me in some way.As I leave on this my first real attempt at art appreciation, I am uncertain about my capacity to take in what I will see, but I am certain that I will enjoy John and Rita our dear friends, living above our condo in Utah and sharing their hearts with us. If they fail in their mission I’m sure it will not be from lack of their trying and it will create much laughter and a good story.It’s 8:45 Tuesday, August 5, 2013 as I write this. We will be off to Springfield in fifteen minutes.So we went. Would you believe that Springfield, Utah has the largest and finest collection of Russian art west of the Mississippi? It seems a bit incongruous Russian Art/Mormon Utah and Springfield is Mormon Utah (The restaurant where we had lunch did not serve any alcohol. Like many Utah towns, the streets were designed by Brigham Young so that an Ox wagon could turn around in the middle of them).Back to Utah and Russian art. Much of the art came from around 1960. The procurers of the art tried to avoid the propaganda art that was so prevalent in Communist Russia. They bought paintings that emphasized the human experiences of family and community, of war and sacrifice, of human tragedy and joy.Many of these paintings emphasized cooperation and communal and family pride. When you consider Utah’s history and tradition of centralized decision-making and rule by a theocracy, it has much in common with Soviet Russia. As mentioned above, Brigham Young designed the streetscape of many Utah towns. He ordered people to move to various towns in Utah. He sent artists to France to learn to paint and then return to produce murals for the Mormon Temple. The Mormon missionary program has something in common with military service and the draft. Communist Russia emphasized family and community cooperation as did and do Mormon communities. Early Mormon families with one father, several wives and many children had much in common with Russian communes.Given these common elements, one can see why Russian art appeals to people in Utah. Many of these paintings also appealed to me.When we arrived, Rita disappeared, returned and said. “I asked the lady for the handout they give to children. That’s always my best guide in a museum. I love the questions they ask in these handouts. They help you understand what you are seeing.” She was given a laminated plastic page with questions for the viewer to ask as they viewed the paintings.Rita gave me this sheet. These questions helped. The first question focused on one large painting of a gaggle of young early adolescent girls. The questions asked me to look closely at the painting for details. “Who are these girls and what are they doing?”They were walking away laughing and smiling from a large brick building with a banner over the door after what appeared to have been some form of ceremony.“What were they holding in their hands?”All of them held a paper rolled into a tube, that could be a diploma.I began to feel their joy as I imagined a graduation ceremony.Other questions pulled me further into the painting. “What is distinctive about their dress? Where is the light coming from? Why are the shadows so long? What colors do I see in the shadows? What time of day is it? What season? What are the girls feeling?”Then the laminate page instructed me to look around the room at all the paintings there and select paintings that made me feel something. “Are the colors in these paintings similar?”For me I felt something as I looked at faces and eyes, frightened eyes of a two year old, happy eyes of the girls graduating, sad tired eyes of men after a battle. The colors that moved me were some red, blues and white in a rug hanging on the side on a fence. The contrast of these vivid colors with the browns and the grays that dominated the picture attracted me.The laminated card suggested that I look at various paintings to discover how the artist used shadows and notice how the shadows changed shapes. I had never thought to look for shadows in paintings til now, another point of interest.The basic message: look for details in the painting until you can imagine an event or story inside the picture. Once you discover the story of the picture inside your mind, allow your mind to wander, putting the details in the painting inside your story.For a lover of a good story, like me, this was fun.With this instruction now absorbed, I found a sculpture of the end of a prize fight with three figures in this sculpture, one on the ground, trying to push himself up from the floor with his arms, wearing shorts and boxing gloves, looking dazed and defeated. Another man, elated, short, dressed in a suit, mouth open, shouting as he held the boxing gloved hand of the man standing beside him up in the air. The man standing beside him, a boxer, like the man behind him on the floor, looked forlornly at the floor, tired, sad, dejected, taking no pleasure in his presumed victory. The title of the sculpture was “De Winnah.”To me that was winning as it should be, taking no pleasure in the defeat of another, recognizing the ordeal and the serious contest given by one’s opponent, aware that the public contest serves the public more than the participants. It reminded me of Roman gladiators, professional football players, Muhammad Ali and other professional athletes who sacrificed their health and youth for the entertainment of others. Victory becomes more tragic than joyful.Yes, this touched me. I saw a whole story. I could write a novel about these men in my head. This excited me.After taking Rita’s help and having now appreciated art as never before, I asked, “Rita, do you have any more ideas for me?”“When you first walk into a museum,” she answered, “go into the gift shop, look through the postcards of the paintings in the museum. Pick the five you like the best, buy them and go through the museum on a scavenger hunt looking for those five.“Then after you have seen several museums, put these postcards together, look at them and I’ll bet you find that you like one particular artist and one particular style the most. That is what it is about. Looking at art is about discovering yourself. It is not just about learning the history of art. What you can learn by going to museums is the recognition of your particular taste in art.”Then John joined the conversation, “There are many writers and many kinds of literature. You may not like poetry or some poets, or some types of fiction or non-fiction. Music is the same. There are some kinds of music you don’t like. That’s fine.“And so it is with art. There are many mediums, tempura, oils, acrylics, water color, many styles and periods. You don’t have to like it all, but look at variety of art and artists and you will find what you like.”“And maybe what you love,” Rita added.“I love this building,” John said. “It was built to be a museum that displayed art. Most museums were buildings built for some other purpose and converted into museums. This building uses its space and lighting perfectly for the art it displays. The architecture of the buildings containing the art interests me as well when I visit museums.”Just then I noticed a man who looked to be in his early forties, strolling through the museum with a backpack holding an oxygen tank with plastic tubes coming from the backpack and connected to his nose, his eyes looking intently at each painting as he stopped in front of it and took time to absorb what he saw.I made up a story about this man. In my story he was terminally ill and he chose to spend some of his last days alive looking at art. I believed my story and I was amazed, dumbfounded that this was how he would spend what precious time he had left. Even if I was wrong and he was recovering from an illness, to be so sick that he needed oxygen to assist his breathing and he would expend what energy he had strolling through a museum. I wanted to see what this man saw. I wanted to be as excited about art as he obviously was.On our car trip back from Utah Marietta and I talked about our upcoming trip to France. She held Camille Paglia’s book, Images. She went through it and selected each painting or one by that artist that we could find in Paris and we used Rick Sieves book Paris 2013 to find where that painting might be located.This was not museum looking according to John and Rita. This was my particular challenge which I hoped to add to John and Rita’s instructions.Chapter TwoThe Curmudgeon Part of my Challenge: Am I Capable of Seeing Paris?The destination of the first leg of our trip home from Utah was Beaver Creek, Colorado. We spent the night there with friends from Nashville in a mansion with perhaps ten bedrooms and baths, four living rooms, two kitchens, seven water heaters and were guests for lunch at the Ritz Carlton.I spent much of this time protecting my psyche from the attacks of inadequacy represented by the wealth and luxury that surrounded me.Believe it or not I was able to convince myself that my 1000 square foot apartment was better than the mansion and that Park City was better than Beaver Creek. My mind worked hard on this project. It took most of my time there. Everywhere in Beaver Creek I went, the contest raged on inside me.As we rode across Kansas two days later, I thought of my father’s words when he came back from his two trips abroad. Each time, when asked how was his trip, he would say, “I had a good time. I’m glad I went. I thought Scotland was nice. And I learned one thing and that was that America is the greatest country in the world and Arkadelphia, Arkansas is the best place I’ve ever been.”I recognize these words because they are words I want to say once I return from France except I want to say Nashville, Tennessee is the best place I’ve ever been. How chauvinistic and parochial are these words I wish to speak. Surely Arkadelphia couldn’t compare to Edinburgh. And my father stayed in the McMillan castle when he was in Scotland, a castle with a world class garden. Where in Arkadelphia was such a place? Really, Arkadelphia, Arkansas was the best place he has ever seen? Where were his glasses?Why did he say such a stupid thing? After I return from Paris why would I want to say that Nashville, Tennessee is the best place I’ve ever seen? Really, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triumph, the Louvre, Versailles, The Luxemburg Gardens, Pont Neuf, the walk along the River Seine. Nashville has better stuff than that?!Yet, I do want to say these words. I know I do, even before I go, I know.In the contest between Park City and Beaver Creek, my condo and the mansion with ten bedrooms and four living rooms and I didn’t mention the car that comes with it or the limo that comes whenever you call, I found my condo and Park City to be superior to Beaver Creek and the mansion.So why? I’m always in a contest justifying my existence, comparing myself to others. In my mind, I have to win this contest. It is a better than/less than contest and I have to find a way to be better than. That is one reason. But there is another one. And that has to do with my and my father’s fear of foreign travel. When he said what he said to people who asked him about the trip, my mother stood right beside him. She was the primary audience for his words. Here is a translation of what his words meant, “Elizabeth, since we have been there and learned that we live in the best place in the world, we do not have to ever leave this place ever again and take me out of my comfort zone, do we?”I could say the same thing to Marietta about Nashville and ask her the same question and her answer would be,“No.”I think I see now what my father was doing in his mind when he proclaimed Arkadelphia, Arkansas that best place in the world and what I do when I say my condo is better than the mansion, when it is not.I don’t want to go to Paris and diminish one of the greatest cities in the world by such a shallow self-serving defensive statement as my father made and as I want to make.I want to come back to Nashville, Tennessee having seen what so many others have seen, Paris, France, the most beautiful city in the world. I want to open my eyes and experience the light on the West bank as a different and unique light that artists from all over the world come to use to see the objets d’art.I don’t know that I have the courage. I will want to retreat to the familiar and proclaim what I know to be all that is worth knowing. I am afraid to learn there are places and things I can never possess that expand meaning and shape reality beyond my capacity to know or understand. A glimpse of this would probably terrify me.But I want to see. I’m going hoping I will find the courage to appreciate rather than denigrate.So, in addition to seeing if I can allow art to matter to me, I have a second quest. I want to discover what is beautiful and unique about Paris, France and the French.DepartureAt my novel writer’s class in August before we left to go to France I talked about my trip and about why I write about traveling. I told the story of when I first realized I exploited Marietta by being a curmudgeon. It occurred to me as we toured the square in Jackson Hole. We went into another gallery of paintings of the Tetons. I groaned and said, “Seen one tit, you’ve seen two. Why are we looking at more paintings of mountains?”Marietta turned around, looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “I am tired of dragging you around this square. I will be looking about the square for thirty more minutes. You can sit down on a bench somewhere or you can come with me, but I don’t want to hear another negative word out of your mouth if you come along. Do you understand?”In that moment I realized how much fun I had complaining and watching her play the role of the positive encourager and cheerleader for whatever event we were observing or attending. My response to an invitation to go and enjoy was the same each time, a complaint answered by her encouraging word. I felt cared for and wanted because if she would endure my unpleasantness and fun at her expense, then she must really want me to be with her.I always felt confident about this until that moment in Jackson Hole. That’s when I learned that she might be happier if I wasn’t along. While that might be true for her, it wasn’t for me.As I told this story to the women in the room at my novel writer’s class, they missed my point. My point was that I had learned my lesson and I was trying to be a better companion to Marietta. I expected applause for taking on my curmudgeon self and trying to change my attitude.I got no applause. “That Marietta is my kind of woman. I like her.” “It’s Paris for God’s sake David. If you can’t have a good time there, something’s bad wrong with you.” “Do you know how many people would love to have your plane ticket and would want to spend time there? You are so fortunate.”Clearly I struck a nerve. “Why does my husband enjoy making me miserable?” “Mine too.” “What’s wrong with you men?”So there is more than just my father and me who fit this role on marital trips.So here I sit feeling guilty about my anxiety. I noticed my anxiety again when Gloria came to take us to the airport. Marietta was still gathering things to take. I sat impatiently in Gloria’s car, complaining about Marietta’s lateness and she was really not late at all.“I wish I wasn’t so nervous about traveling,” I said as the car began to move us toward the airport at 10:30 A.M.Gloria and Marietta ignored this comment. “Gloria, get in the left lane here,” I said next.This did get a response from Gloria, “Dr. McMillan, please be quiet and stop your backseat driving. We know you are anxious.”“I’m going to have a good time.” I said more to myself than to Marietta or Gloria.Marietta booked us in economy class. I suppose I will be grateful when I pay the bill. The movies were good. I had hoped to sleep but that was not to be for me or Marietta. She had resigned to this and listened to French lessons. I closed my eyes and sometimes listened to the movies and sometimes babies crying.We arrived at 11:00 P.M. Central time, 6:00 A.M. Paris time. I felt pretty good. We got through customs and retrieved our bags without incident, though we forgot the baggage carousel number and were lost for ten minutes.Rick Steves book, Paris, suggested we buy musée passes and bus and subway tickets at the airport. The booth that sells these did not open until 7:30, so we waited 45 minutes and bought them there. (That wasn’t so bad). The man who sold us the tickets told us the train was better than the bus. This contradicted Rick Steves.We decided to take the train, determined to solve the puzzle of Paris transit system. We walked a half mile to the train station, puzzled over the signage: where to exit the train and transfer subway lines. We were very proud when we found ourselves sitting in a subway car ready to get off at the St. Paul station, two blocks from the apartment Marietta rented for us at 25 Rue de Rossier. And so we did get off when we arrived at our stop. The blue Paris sky that emerged as we rode up the escalator to the street excited our senses, that blue sky came with pleasant 68° air.Once on the street we stumbled upon the right direction. Well that’s not fair. Marietta located East by the sun, then figured we should go West. We did. We found Rue de Rossier, and #24, but not #25. It was not opposite #24 as we expected. After wandering about for fifteen minutes, we asked and somehow our question was understood and we were kindly led to #25. And then the key to the outside door wouldn’t work. Marietta booked an apartment through Home Away. They sent us keys. The key fit but would not turn the lock.Luckily another apartment dweller came to the door. “The lock trés difficile” and with some jiggling of the key, she opened the door. We stayed at the door trying our key in the lock, until I learned that tilting the key up as I jiggled it in the lock turned the lock. Once we knew how to open the building front door, we felt safer to go inside.Our apartment supposedly was on the 1st floor above the ground floor. We found three apartment doors with locks on the landing of the 1st flight of stairs. Our keys worked with none of these doors. Thirty minutes later we wandered through a hall door onto a balcony and found a door to a balcony apartment with a lock that received our key.Once inside, we found a 350 sq. foot apartment. No king bed as advertised. A tiny kitchen and a commode in a closet whose base rested on a rise one foot above the floor and gave one the distinct feeling of sitting on a throne. Next to the commode was a tiny sink with the rest of the bathroom in a tiny closet on the other side of a small sitting room containing a bath tub and sink.The queen bed was comfortable. After we unpacked, got a bit of breakfast at a quaint Jewish bakery on the street, we fell into the bed and slept for five hours.Once we awoke we began to orient ourselves. We were in the Jewish section of Paris, le Marais. It is located one subway stop from the Louvre.The best feature of our apartment was its four windows. They opened to allow fresh 70° air to gently move about the apartment.With time we grew to love this place.The First Day: Can I see the Light?Marietta and I have a preferential difference in how we want to frequent restaurants and other places when we travel. She wants to see as many different places and eat at as many different restaurants as she can.Me, I want to stay in one place, not schlep our bags from strange place to strange place and I want to choose one or two restaurants and become as much of a regular customer as I can. I want to go to a new place and drill down, make human connections and get to know a few people as well as possible.Marietta wants to spread out and have as many different experiences as she can. In this contrast of styles, I am monogamous and she is promiscuous. And of course, I think my way is better. What she might say here is that she is more curious and courageous and I am more of a coward.I think perhaps all of the above is true.As I said earlier, on our first morning just after we found our accommodations, we also discovered a wonderful Jewish bakery, two stores down from the entrance to our building. The smell of baking bread drew us there. Inside there was a glass display case full of all kinds of breads and pastries. Some pastries were combinations of crust, custard and glazed fruit. There were large croissants, several flavors of schneks which looked like our cinnamon rolls, bagels in many flavors and there were large loaves of all sorts of breads, some artfully twisted and baked and of course, many baguettes.On the other side of the room were tables and chairs for customers who wanted a seated meal. This bakery served quiches, omelets, ham and a variety of sandwiches.I ordered an apple schnek and an onion omelet. Marietta ordered a croissant and a mushroom omelet. We both had tea. The schnek had a fruit flavor, sweet but not too sweet. Marietta’s croissant had a crispy, flaky texture combination that we had never tasted before, a flavor that tasted more like toast than bread. The omelets were almost paper thin and delicious. The tea came with very hot water. (The food in almost every meal in France came very hot, almost too hot to eat).We were delighted and satisfied with this our first meal in Paris.As an aside about jet lag. We let our bodies tell us what to do. And often they told us to take a nap. Sometimes during the first five days, fatigue would fall on us like a heavy cape from the sky and if we could get back to our apartment, we would take a nap.After we awakened from our five hour after breakfast nap, we were off to see Paris, Marietta ready to absorb all she could and me wondering if I could appreciate the special qualities of Paris as Americans who came to Paris in the 1800s or would I still say “wherever you go you are still there.” We walked three blocks to the Seine and boarded a crowded tourist boat. We floated down the Seine with 100 others. We passed several similar boats along the way. I was looking for the light described by Americans who came to Paris in the 1800’s. I think I saw it. I’m not sure. The water of the Seine was a clear olive color. The walled river bank radiated brown, gray and green. The sunlight sparkled the water. The architecture of massive stone buildings with towers and turrets rose above us as we floated the river.We got off the boat at the Eiffel Tower. It is hard to capture the immenseness, the graceful lines and appeal of this structure. I did not expect to be impressed by the Eiffel Tower. Previously I thought it was just another over-hyped tourist attraction. The only unpleasant part of a visit to the tower was the tourists. It was stunning to look at and imagine the thought and work that was required to build it.As we walked away from the tower, we heard drums beating, voices yelling in French and a crowd gathering on some steps at the Champs de Mars.A troupe of five young men, three were French Africans, one Caucasian and one Indian in appearance. They danced together, performed amazing acrobatic feats, flips, back twirls, one-hand stands and bantered with the audience, hoping to collect money at the end. And they did. From there we walked to the Arc de Triumph and returned to the river via the Champs-Elysee.The Americans who came to Paris in the 1800’s called Paris a walking city. They celebrated the opportunity to stroll in the gardens and on the streets, fond of observing people as they walked. They thought they could identify Germans, English, Parisian’s, and rural French. They loved commenting on the fashion and dress. They were critical of the attention French men gave to fashion, yet many of these same American critics imported French clothes once they returned to America.We embraced the challenge to walk the Paris streets. We had the idea that if we followed the Amish diet (10,000 steps a day and you can eat what you want) that we could enjoy French food without any limits (This turned out not to be true. We each gained five or so pounds and dropped this weight in about two weeks of hard dieting back home).We did enjoy observing the people as we walked. We too thought we could identify people of various nationalities. Paris, in contrast to Germany where Marietta visited in May and in contrast to Normandy (which we would visit later) was amazingly heterogeneous in skin color and languages spoken. We saw seven oriental couples posing for what appeared to be wedding pictures speaking their native tongue and accompanied by an oriental photographer speaking their language. We wondered what it must cost to come to Paris from say Korea with a Korean photographer for the purpose of taking a formal wedding photograph with the Seine River and the sunset in the background.Again, we tried to see the unique Paris color in the light and again, I think we did. They sky was a vivid blue. The sun set into pinks and purples. The photographs taken on the bridges crossing the Seine of August 29, 2013 at 8:05 had to be gorgeous.The Arc de Triomphe was a grand large structure, a square of ovals in the middle of a large roundabout with cars and people swirling in circles around its some forty yards from its base and streets moving out from the circle like spokes on a wheel. We walked two streets over to the Champs-Elysees, a huge street, hard to imagine how wide it is. Wide sidewalks on both sides of the street are part of what makes this a grand street, but by far the most impressive feature of this boulevard to me were the Plan trees that lined both sides of the street. They were huge. What amazed me about them was that they were trimmed like a hedge so that the lines made by the leaf vegetation were vertical, not round, making a straight line of sight down both sides of the street.But why? Trimming these trees like this must cost a fortune. Round bushy trees that grow according to their nature are pretty too, aren’t they?For Paris the answer seems to be “yes, but the lines created by the tree trimmer artist creates a pleasing pattern to the eye.” And it does. Beauty is worth the price for a Parisian.On the Champs-Elysees we saw exclusive stylish stores and the McDonald’s that Rick Steves recommends for a five dollar hamburger and a window perch for people watching. There were also expensive sidewalk cafes.This was not a cheap-artist-Hemmingway kind of street.At 9:00 P.M. with the sun almost gone, we returned to the boat and floated back down the Seine, again looking to see if we could appreciate the Paris light and the river. For beauty’s sake, the Paris city budget was stretched so that lights were placed on the Eiffel Tower and on this night they sparkled like fireworks. And lights were symmetrically placed along the river shimmering on the water and shining up on the walled river bank and into the trees. Yes, the light here was especially beautiful and if this light was one of the reasons that over 20,000 people road these river taxis on this day to the tune of something like 20 Euro a piece then the city light bill gets paid somehow.We got off the boat at the wrong place, began walking in the wrong direction, eventually hailed a cab and returned to our Rue de Rossier, where exhausted, we found the restaurant just across from our building entrance, Café de Marianne. Its menu seemed more Greek or Middle Eastern than French. We had a plate of ten small servings of a variety of foods that included roasted eggplant (aubergine), pastrami, salami, a sesame seed paste, hummus, tabouli, babaganush, other things I don’t remember and Marianne’s house wine which we thought would be good and inexpensive and it was good but not inexpensive. The meal cost about 20 Euros, which was a good price for such a delicious meal.“Let’s make this our restaurant and we can eat at the bakery every morning,” I said.“What!” Marietta replied. “I didn’t come to Paris to eat at the same restaurant every evening.”After much discussion, we agreed to eat our breakfast at the bakery down the street, but we ate at a different restaurant every night.The best restaurant meal we had was that Café Le Grande Pan. The rare steak I ordered could be cut into paper thin slices that melted in my mouth. Marietta and our friend Kathy Celaro shared a two inch thick veal steak. Both came with crisp hot french fries. As appetizers I had delicious squid, Kathy and our French friend, Isabelle, had guacamole. Marietta had pate. For desert I had fruit salad with a Brittany baguette, Marietta had a chocolate tarte. We also had a serving assortment of cheeses. I also got the check for my meal, Marietta’s and Isabelle’s. That was the only thing that was hard to swallow.The Louvre: Can Art Move Me?Today I begin in earnest my dance with Camille Paglia. Her thesis is that art matters and that if one sees these certain 29 images, one’s life will be changed. The reason is that good art reaches inside us and moves us. Artists pour emotional spiritual energy into their work and if the art is well done, the energy remains in the marble or on the canvas and when we observe the art, the energy pours into us. The artist spent hours thinking and crafting the details in the art. I wondered if I was capable of feeling and responding to the conversation artists begin when they put their art on display to say things that words cannot.It is my read of Paglia that she fervently disagrees with the current deconstruction movement in art in which some claim that all art is the same and that art becomes valuable or famous as a result of capricious turns of fate and silly wealthy collectors.“Students are now taught to look skeptically at art for its flaws, biases, omissions and covert power plays. To admire and honor art, except when it conveys politically correct messages, is regarded as naive and reactionary.”Paglia believes that the history of great art reflects the development of the human species technically and morally. She contends that our art reflects our cultural progress.And she argues we have made progress and that you can see it in the evolution of our art. Art is important and relevant.“Art unites the spiritual and material realms. In an age of alluring, magical machines, a society that forgets art risks losing its soul.”So I’m off to accept Paglia’s challenge. I want to see if I can find my soul in art.First step, the Louvre. We walked about a mile to the Louvre, lost Marietta’s change purse with 160 Euro and my museum pass. But eventually we found ourselves inside the bowels of what seemed like a giant octopus with multiple floors, escalators, elevators, circular stairs and regular (well not regular) fifteen foot wide marble circular staircases.Thousands of tourists accompanied us on our tour. We bought audio guide lectures with earphones. However, often we could not hear, partly because of crowd noise and partly because the sound was bad.The Louvre has so many pieces of art that the audio guide barely covered five percent of what we saw. Most statues and paintings had no number that one might use to punch into the audio guide so that one could hear a talk describing that piece.There were so many exquisite roman and greek statues that were barely even labeled. To me it seemed as if something was wrong with the Louvre having so much stuff that it did not seem to go to the trouble of annotating and commemorating. When there was commentary about a piece, much of it had to do with how it came to rest in the Louvre and not about the artwork, its context in history or the artist.Lucky for us we had Camille Paglia who did a great job of providing a context for much of what we saw. Her book Images begins with Egyptian art from around 1250 BC. At that time Egyptian culture focused on resurrection and life beyond death. This stands in contrast to religion in pre-recorded history which focused mostly on fertility and the impotence of human existence in the face of nature. Pre-historic religion and art focused mostly on the feminine. The statues and carvings of that period were mostly of pregnant women or women with sagging breasts looking down.In contrast Egyptian women stood tall and erect, looked forward, head up, their beauty rather than their fertility represented. These paintings portray historical queens and kings accompanied by Egyptian gods escorting them into the afterlife. The artists were unknown craftsman painting what they were told by whoever commissioned the painting.Paglia’s next great shift in art is depicted by a bronze sculpture from 475 B.C. of a charioteer holding reins. Few bronze statues from that period survived because metal was too valuable and looters melted down bronze statues to use the metal for other purposes. However, this statue was preserved by a landslide and was recovered in 1896 by a team of French archaeologists.The subject is an ordinary man, not a king or a god (though there were depictions of rulers and gods). In Hellenistic art local heroes, athletes and warriors were potential subjects. Often art glamorized young male beauty. Greek art attempted to represent the beautiful and the good. They saw existence as a character building contest, a perpetual race and victory as transient, just as transient as perfect beauty which has a short season.The face and eyes of the charioteer are focused, not prideful but sober, self-controlled, the face of a rational Apollonian mind in a trance that comes only in an athletic contest.Greet art shifts the focus to the masculine form, to the exceptional person and on life as it is lived by people at their best.In the Louvre we saw ancient Greek vases and marble sculptures depicting contests and battles, men with shields and spears, naked wrestlers and runners whose moral duty, according to Paglia was to discover excellence in themselves (reminiscent of a U.S. Army T.V. commercial about being the best you can be).Paglia’s next step in art is represented by the Caryatid from the Porch of the maidens. The focus here is on the role of women. Lord Elgin brought a statue of one of the four maidens from Greece to England, thus preserving it. These four statues supported a marble roof. They represented the burden that Greek women carried. These women were part of a religious sisterhood. They seemed to have freely chosen their servitude, each one a confident complete woman. These statues demonstrate that the Greeks are not frightened into submission by their gods, but serve their gods pridefully by respecting themselves and serving their god.In the Louvre we saw sculptures of Athena and of amazon women who represent strong prideful women who fought and served their people with pride, similar to the four maidens Paglia described.In Egyptian art the artist had little freedom to sculpt personality into their creations. In Greek art the artists seemed to be given the respect to allow them to express their vision and their subjects could include local sportsmen and able women in addition to gods and rulers, a step forward in art and one I could see.American’s in ParisOn our second night in Paris we attended a French cooking class at Place de Madeline, adjacent to a cookware shop. Marietta chose an English speaking class as opposed to a French speaking one.We changed subways and arrived at Place de Madeline five minutes late. We had what had come to be our usual locked out-not-sure-this-is-the-place-then door-opens-and-we-find-ourselves-where-we-belong experience.Olivier, our teacher, welcomed us and handed us aprons as we walked in the door. Eight others stood around a counter in the center of a white room with sinks at each end of the counter. The eight others were long-time couple friends from Columbus, Ohio all about sixty years old.Sea bass was to be the main dish. We first sautéed separately cubed eggplant, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, red peppers added a tomato sauce. Olivier made a pastry of flour, almond powder, parsley, chervil, tarragon, marjoram, butter and thyme. This pastry piece was placed on the fish and baked in the oven. The vegetables were placed next to the fish. We had cantaloupe gazpacho and for desert melting chocolate individual cakes and dried tomato slices.Olivier taught us how to use a chopping knife by cutting down and pushing forward, down and through the vegetable. He taught us to dice an onion by first cutting off the top and bottom and then slicing the onion in halves. Olivier insisted on cutting out the seeds in the middle of the zucchini, the middle of the tomatoes and the eggplant because the meat of the vegetable next to the skin contained the most flavor. Olivier taught us to slice the skin from the sea bass.The best things we cooked was the baked tomato meat. Olivier put a few drops of honey (miel) on top of a slice of tomato meat and baked the tomato for thirty minutes at 200°. The tomato slices were delicious, better than I ever imagined.The four couples enjoyed the wine, the conversation and the laughter of good friends as they fumbled with us through the fish skinning, and vegetable chopping.The fish took only a few minutes to cook. Each vegetable was sautéed separately before Olivier combined them for the serving of sautéed vegetables.Olivier was well practiced at the art of teaching stupid Americans like us. The meal was, of course, good, but this was more of an American moment than a French experience. Though I wished we had a band of friends with us sometimes, I was also glad to not have their protection. I would have cowered in the middle of the pack and never done anything but play follow the leader.Flirting in Paris: What Is It About the French?Last night, as we walked to our dinner restaurant, we passed other couples strolling to various destinations. I noticed one particular couple coming toward us. The man’s arm rested on her shoulder and his hand seemed to cup her breast. Surely, I thought to myself, his hand is not where it appears to be. Then he squeezed her breast and she took no notice. They walked and talked as if they were holding hands.Breasts in Paris seem different somehow. Last time I was here, I noticed that women seemed to wear very form fitting tops that revealed their figures. I didn’t see that as much this time.What I did see was women’s breasts moving with a graceful fluidity under their blouses. With each step there was a flouncing movement below the fabric surface. The shape of the breasts emerged and fell with every step.I wondered if it was just me being more sensitive and aware for some reason until I noticed a woman whose breasts seemed to remain fixed and stable as she moved. Yes, I said to myself, that’s what I’m used to seeing in America. Then I noticed a woman with a see-through blouse with bra visible beneath. Her bra allowed her breasts the same freedom of movement I noticed before. Her breasts seemed to dance. They were obviously an asset to be shared and enjoyed with a chosen person.As we continued to walk three beautiful young women walked together across the street. A disheveled man yelled at them a leering word I didn’t know but its meaning I clearly understood. So did they and they laughed and smiled at him appreciative of his attention. Their response was not at all what I expected.As we walked down our street, Rue de Rossiers, a couple with a baby stroller preceded us. She reached behind him put her hand in his back pocket and walked along talking with him, squeezing affectionately every few steps.Later we saw a souvenir shop selling among other things an apron with naked female breasts painted as if the breasts were sticking out of the front of the apron. Below the breasts was inscribed, “This is Paris.”Dinner at Charlotte’sYou may remember Charlotte, Isabelle and Christians, 16-year-old daughter, from my description of our last trip to Paris. That was 2003, ten years ago. Now Charlotte lives north of Paris in a very nice home with her sixteen month son and his father, Arnold.Dinner at Charlotte’s was planned by 7:00 P.M. that evening. We didn’t get the message that this was the plan until 7:30, when Isabelle’s email got through to me. After several failed attempts at calling, we finally talked with her on the phone.We took the subway, changed trains and ten stops later we emerged from Edward Quimet station to see Isabelle’s face and to fall into her welcoming arms. She led us to their new Volkswagen SUV (a model not for sale in the U.S.). They had their old car for 18 years. It was still in good shape when they sold it. When in Paris, they walked or used public transportation. They only used their car to go outside of Paris, as we were about to do now. We could have gone by train and during the day that would have been easier, but now with less traffic, car was best.Charlotte worked at a Paris business school where she connected corporations and businesses to students looking for internships and jobs. Arnold lost his job the day before. He had an MBA and experience selling IT. Though he was obviously sad, both he and Charlotte were confident he would have a job soon or that’s what Isabelle told us on the way to dinner.Isabelle and Christian know about how the Southern U.S. culture views a couple having a child outside of marriage. Christian explained to us that he carefully instructed both of his children to be careful about marriage. He hoped that his son, Thomas and daughter, Charlotte would date many potential mates. When they thought they found the right one, they should live together with them before marriage for a significant time. When sure they have the right mate, then marry. Children need their parents to commit to stay together. That’s the reason they should conduct this due diligence before marriage.Christian was proud that both of his children followed his advice. Thomas married when his now wife was pregnant. Charlotte is planning a wedding for January with Arnold.We arrived at Charlotte and Arnold’s home at 8:30. Arnold inherited this house from his grandmother. It was built by his grandparents in the 1950’s as a country home away from Paris. Now it was part of the Paris megalopolis, a row house with adjacent homes on each side.One thing that made this a special home was its fenced in backyard. In Paris there are no yards, only buildings and parks, no private yards or gardens.Once inside this two bedroom home, we met 16-month-old, Jerome, a happy baby, glad to see his grandmother, Isabelle. He was just about ready to stand and walk, but not just yet. He was a happy baby, content to play on the floor in the center of the activity and conversation, attended to by me and his grandmother, leaving Charlotte free to set the table and put the finishing touches on the meal.Before the meal we gave Charlotte gifts from Nashville, a Dr. Zeus book in English for Jerome, two Vanderbilt water bottles for Thomas and Charlotte and a Vanderbilt t-shirt for Christian.Once seated at the table with wine poured, toasts were offered to welcome us. The meal was chicken de vin, rice, a special homemade apple sauce and French bread. This was followed by a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and finished with a plate of several different cheeses for dessert.The food was delicious but the conversation was the best part of the meal. We drank wine and laughed, drank wine and laughed. I recalled the time Charlotte sang The Rose a cappella for us and another time when Thomas gave us a piano concert.Thomas and his family could not come for dinner because they were moving to a new apartment on Saturday and they had packing to do.The conversation was about many things. Charlotte had discovered Love’s Languages; we talked about Christian’s father. He was one of only about 1,000 resistance fighters in WWII. He lost his foot in a battle in Italy. Christian is very proud of his heritage from his father and is appreciative of America’s part in freeing France in Operation Warlord. (Later, I was to learn that there were more French fighting as German soldiers against the U.S. and the allies than Germans when we invaded.)The most remarkable thing about the meal was how long we sat at the table, talked, ate and drank wine. I cannot imagine a more pleasant evening. Even with this feast of food and wine, we were not tired or much effected by the wine.Lost in Paris: My Father’s Fear ReturnsIsabelle suggested we go to the Musée de Paris, dedicated to the history of Paris and Paglia recommended we see the Hotel de Soubise, the Museum of French Archives. In this building, Paglia said, was a room that best represented Rococo art. (More about these Museums and their contents later).Once we finished both museum tours, Marietta wanted to go shopping. I wanted to sit and read about French history. She left me sitting on a bench in a courtyard inside the beautiful grounds of the Hotel de Soubise. I read a book there for about an hour or so, then the sky began to come down in small bits of rain, enough to make me wary. My eyes falling shut as I read added to my desire to return home. I knew Marietta had keys, a map and knew her way home, so I left dragging my body to what I hoped would be a nap.I turned exactly the wrong way when I left the Hotel de Soubise. The street I was hoping to reach was Rue Vielle du Temple. I did reach Rue du Temple, thinking I had found the way home. I turned on Rue du Temple away from our apartment and walked about a mile before I knew I was thoroughly lost.Then I began to panic. As panic came, so did my need to blame Marietta. I conjured many reasons why this was her fault. I didn’t expect her to be gone so long. She was off needlessly spending money. Why had she taken the maps with her!? (She didn’t really. I didn’t know I had one in my back pocket.)Finally I turned and walked toward Rue de Rivoli and the Seine where I knew I could orient myself. A block from Rue du Rivoli I asked for directions from a store-keeper. He sent me off in the wrong direction again, but when I went his way I found the Pompidou Museum and from there I knew my way home.When I got home I found a note from Marietta. When she returned to my bench at Hotel Soubise to find that I had gone, she found a map museum guide I had left on the bench at Hotel Soubise garden with my handwriting and correctly surmised that I had tired, left this piece of paper which I wanted to keep and went home. But when I wasn’t home, she thought that perhaps I had gone to the restroom at Hotel Soubise and she returned to the courtyard hoping to find me sitting on the bench.When I got home and saw her note telling me she had been home and was out looking for me, I imagined that she was as panicked and angry as I had been. Though our attempts to use our phones to text Isabelle had failed, I tried to text Marietta. The text went through. She responded and I received her reply.I fell in the bed hoping to sleep until she returned, but couldn’t sleep. I lay there for thirty minutes worrying about Marietta, thinking I would hear her entry. I finally got up to find Marietta sitting on the couch in the next room. She had been there for about fifteen minutes.I expected a tantrum from her and got a smile and the question, “Did you get some sleep?” instead.Amazing, I thought. We debriefed our misadventures. Me telling her where my lost feet had been and she telling me how she deduced what had happened. We laughed. No one was blamed. We decided to always take our phones, to each have a set of keys and use the apartment as our default option for what to do when we are lost and separated. Oh and both carry a map.What amazed me was that neither of us wagged our fingers at the other. I couldn’t believe that. I was grateful to Marietta for her forbearance and proud that I didn’t sink to my lowest self.Travel for me, especially foreign travel, is fraught with opportunities for bickering and conflict. The unfamiliar creates fears and feelings of inadequacy. I look for ways to compensate. Most of those ways transform my fear into anger aimed at Marietta.It comes on me so quickly. I am so embarrassed when I see this in myself. I am amazed that Marietta can tolerate this when my anger comes at her. I am also amazed at how she copes with ambiguity and the unfamiliar.Just after I wrote this she had a fit over, I forget, I think it was what to wear for supper and somehow it was my fault.The Pompidou: Can I be Moved by Modern Art?The Pompidou museum houses modern art from contemporary artists. I hoped I would find some things I liked there, but I was skeptical. As we entered, we passed a children’s play area which allowed children to enjoy creative play. It was colorful and had several varieties of settings for children to draw, build, color or sculpt.We went directly to the 5th floor where the current artists were displayed. I liked Genevieve Asse’s squares of colors. That’s all they are, squares of one color brushed on the canvas. One had a white line in its center, perhaps suggesting an opening.One critic described her paintings this way: “Ranging from washy to solid surfaces and from dry to loaded brushstrokes, with particular attention to material density and color – gray white, searing red and blue.”She said of her work that it is not that she chooses color and ignores form. She sees the form inside the color (much like Michelangelo’s saw form inside of blocks of marble). Her focus is on the spiritual essence which transcends form.As I looked at her work I believed I saw something spiritual and inexpressible through words or form in her brush strokes and I can’t say more than that except that her art intrigued me.My most inspiring moment of this trip happened at this Musee. In the grand hallway next to the Asse exhibition was a large 4 X 6 feet white canvas. In the center of the canvas was a bright red splotch covering about 2 ½ square inches. Someone scribbled a messy doddle about the red spot with an ink pen taking up about 1 square foot with a line trailing toward the edge of the canvas.I was stunned by how artful this was not. A child might have done this in the play area downstairs. It was an ugly mess. I was disgusted that someone might call this art.I read the small blurb beside the painting. It was dedicated to Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, who dressed in Odysseus’s armor and led the Greek army into battle while Odysseus spent the day praying. Telemachus was killed. When Odysseus heard, he was grief-stricken.“And this was supposed to represent this story?” I said to Marietta. “I don’t see anything here that reminds me of a battle or Odysseus or armor or his son.”“It is about grief,” Marietta said, “The red spot represents death. The scribble represents his internal chaos and emotional confusion. The empty white space represents the empty desolation he felt.”Marietta’s words planted a seed in my mind. As it grew, I could see exactly what she said.The artist (whoever he was) expressed an emotion that could not be captured in words, perhaps not even in faces. As I continued to look at this painting in my mind, I saw the lonely white space, the fragmented life in the scribbled ink and death in the red spot. These images haunted me in a way that a representation of human figures could not. I thought about this painting for days after this.Yes, this was art. And yes a child might have drawn it. That’s the point. Anyone can, with some thought and imagination, express human experience in a way that words cannot. Talent for drawing is not required. And yes, when we do put human emotion on paper in a way that speaks to others, we communicate and share this emotion so that the artist no longer bears this emotion alone and so that others can see themselves in the art. And anyone can do this. It does not require a talent for drawing.Musée de l'OrangerieI saw myself today the way I had been a week before. As we walked through the Musée de l’Orangerie, we met a couple from Nashville. We sat looking at Monet’s water lilies that came in the huge package of a forty foot oval room with walls covered with an ambiguous blue/purple that if you looked at the painting for long, you saw water lilies. This expanse of color is difficult to describe. As I sat beside my male friend I said, “We just came from the Pompidou Museum and I was surprised that I liked some of what I saw there.”“I like Van Gogh,” he said, “and that’s as far as I can go but I really like Van Gogh.”This conversation took place in the first floor of the museum sitting on white upholstered benches looking at the huge eight paneled painting of Monet’s water lilies surrounding us.Monet finished and signed the paintings on November 11, 1918, the day of the armistice of World War I and what Monet called the “Day of Victory.” Monet and French Prime Minister George Clemenceau had been close friends since 1895.These paintings were to be a gift from Monet to the Nation and he expected that a Museum would be built for the special purpose of housing these eight massive panels.Monet believed that peace came to the human soul when people were alone in nature without others or any signs of human existence. He found such peace in his garden in Giverny. He installed a beautiful garden adjacent to his home and studio there, the centerpiece being a water lily pond, the subject of many of his paintings.Monet’s hope was that the end of this “War to end all wars” and this to-be-constructed museum with a room surrounded by these eight panels would bring peace to the French people.While the colors and the fluid brush strokes were calming and pleasant to look at, I was taken mostly by amazing confidence of Monet, that he knew that the French government would gratefully receive his paintings, spend millions of dollars to build a museum building to house them and expect that people from all over the world would one day pay to come sit and look at them. I can’t imagine how it must have felt to believe one’s gift would have such value.The paintings on the second floor (which was the floor below) stunned me with their depth and the change they showed in the thought and style of the artists.These paintings come from the Walter-Guilamne collection. Paul Guilamne was a famous art dealer who represented at one time or another all of the artists whose paintings graced these walls. He saw something important, powerful and provocative in each of these artists. He bought, promoted and appreciated their work. Some of them showed their gratitude by painting a portrait of him and or by gifting him some of their art. He bought many others.When he died, he left the paintings to the state after his wife, Domenica, died. In her lifetime she could sell what she needed to sell and the remainder would go to the state.After he died, she married Jean Walter. When Jean Walter died, she adopted a son, Jean Pierre. She became a suspect in a case of attempted murder with Jean Pierre as her intended victim. Gossip had it that the case was resolved in her favor when she agreed to transfer the collection to the Louvre in exchange for her immunity from prosecution.Although Jean Walter had nothing to do with the gathering of the paintings, she insisted that the collection also bear his name.Paintings by Renoir first caught my eye. He loved to paint nudes. He said of himself that he was drawn to the flesh. He wanted his paintings to reflect the power of the skin to invite touch.That made sense to me. I understand pornography and Renoir implied that he wanted his nudes to provoke desire. And they did. If Renoir was a U.S. Supreme Court judge, he would not clearly know the difference between art and pornography and he would not care, given his history of making love to his young models.As I wandered down the hall listening to the audio guide of various paintings, the next artist that moved me was Picasso. The picture of a nude woman with her face and one of her legs out of proportion grabbed me for some reason. I’m not sure why. Her eyes seemed to be coming after me aggressively as did her body. She smiled showing no embarrassment about her nudity. Her motion or what looked like motion toward me was more masculine than feminine.At the time Picasso began moving away from the realism of the early paintings of his adolescence, there was a move in art begun by Manet to paint what one sees in one’s imagination. (Hence Manet’s painting of a man having a picnic in the countryside completely dressed in a fine suit sitting with a beautiful naked woman, a woman not really there who he wished was).Also at the same time, there was a strong interest in African and folk art because such art reflected the basics of the human primitive nature.In the painting of this nude Picasso, who could have painted a lovely sensuous nude like Renoir, painted this. I wondered if this woman was what his mind saw as he looked at her, a woman whose confidence and personal power was so strong that she did not care that she was being seen naked and if she was, her nakedness was part of her self-assertion. She was not prey to anyone. This was such an unusual way to portray a woman naked. I liked her. I wanted to talk with her. Perhaps her nudity would inspire sexual interest in me, but this was an afterthought.There were several paintings from Picasso’s blue period. They were lovely, tender, intimate and somewhat sad. I was especially taken by a painting of a man and a pregnant woman, naked and embracing, obviously sad, comforting one another, their grief palpable. This was a mostly realistic painting.I was also drawn to Picasso’s distorted geometric painting of a small table with bread, wine, a goblet and a block of cheese. The table top appears slanted so that the food in a normal world would be falling into the lap of a person who would sit at the table. To me, Picasso seemed to be using the distortion to represent his attraction to the food he wished would move toward him.I was getting it now. I could feel an energy coming from the canvas. I was finding meaning in what I saw. I was sympathetic to the artists who refused to make reality beautiful in an attempt to cover up the tragedy and craziness of human existence.Art was clearly moving me. Artists were saying a variety of things. Some still wanted to decorate the world with realistic beauty. Others wished to invite the viewer to discover order in the midst of what at first looked like a mess of color. These were the Impressionists. (More about them later). Others wanted to design a formulaic way to put dots of color next to each other so that instead of seeing dots, viewers would see clear images formed by the dots. I particularly liked to look at these Pointillists paintings and watch images form and disappear as I moved toward and then away from the paintings. Rococo/Hotel Sobios: What I Did Not LikeWe were staying in the district called the Marais, near several museums. One of them was the French Archival Museum. (I left from this place when I got lost as I described earlier.) It contained a room that Paglia described as the best remaining example an interior decorating style termed “rococo.” It was once called le style de Pompadour for Madame Pompadour, King Louis XV’s mistress, a patron of the arts.Rococo was (and in some circles still is) a derisive term for excessive over-the-top decoration.If Paglia’s point is that art should emotionally move the observer, then this room did its job with me. The gold leaf, the cherubic drawings, the carved molding, the cost in labor and the image of love and happiness that was there for one person (the mistress of the Duke of Orleans in 1738) disgusted me, much as the Versailles did when we visited there ten years ago.Of course, there was a French Revolution. How could people stand by struggling to survive, while a very few people lived in a world supported by servants, decorated to deny the reality of the human suffering that is part of life. Why were they entitled to excessive pleasure in all things while so many had so little to enjoy?Being in this room infuriated me. I felt the impulse to tear it all down, to scrape off the gold leaf, to deface the paintings and throw the furniture out the window.I must not have been the only person who felt this way about this room because Paglia reported that of the thousands of detailed rococo designs stored in the French archives, few have survived, some destroyed in the French Revolution, others remodeled because rococo became a symbol of excessive decoration and poor taste.Rococo captured the self-absorbed hedonism of the French leisure class. According to Paglia “Rococo is a feminine style: women are shown as rosily nymph-like, while men are often languid and effete.” (It is the opposite of the heroic style of Greek art).“Rococo was a chapter in the history of pastoral, an ancient genre that worships but sentimentalizes nature. Rococo’s twining, twisting creepers show nature invading and recapturing the social realm. But instead of purifying what they touch they introduce a self-conscious perversity. The empty white background of rococo paneling is a willed blankness, a blocking out of unpleasant realities. French rococo interiors have clarity, yet they are suspended, elusive, unresolved. So much pretty motion and yet so much golden paralysis,” (Images, page 76).It is no wonder that David and other painters left this style to paint scenes of current historical events, like Marat’s death and Napoleon’s Investiture as Emperor.And it is even more understandable why impressionists rebelled against the clarity of rococo beauty for muted brushstrokes that allow the viewer to participate in the creation of the image in one’s mind, a more democratic process in art.A Friend Along: A Friend Helps the Curmudgeon Father part of MeKathy Celaro arrived in Paris on Sunday. She accompanied us to our various destinations in Paris prior to our leaving on the train for Caen.Kathy had three fairly recent significant losses. She lost her husband, Lennie a year ago. Her daughter retired from practicing medicine, moving her from the role of a primary caregiver to her grandson into the singular role of Grandmother and her sister died the month before she left for Paris.She joined us on Sunday afternoon exhausted from her trip. We went to the Musée de L’Orangerie. She was game but after our tour of the museum, we dropped her off at her hotel for a nap.Unfortunately for Kathy, she is a good enough friend that Marietta and I aren’t very restrained in our conversation around her. I watched her observe our interaction. It wasn’t long before I began to wish that my tone was calmer and my words to Marietta more compassionate.After one of our bickering moments, we apologized to Kathy for our unpleasantness.“I would give anything for another five minutes of bickering with Lennie,” she responded. “I am very familiar with this conversation.”These were kind words, and the fact that she was there made me aware of how much I take my fears out on Marietta. I wished I didn’t and I tried harder not to.She was a soft presence, a gentle buffer that helped Marietta and I look for kinder words when we talked to each other.A good friend like Kathy was an asset for us on this trip.How the French Invented LoveWhen I had down time in Paris I wrote on this essay or I read either David McCullough’s The Great Journey or Marilyn Yaloms, How the French Invented Love. One morning while waiting for Marietta to get dressed, I read about Heloise and Abelard in How the French Invented Love.Abelard, a 37 years old, teacher/intellectual, handsome, eleventh century monk and scholar, rock star of his time, met Heloise a young 15 year old prodigy who could read Hebrew, Greek and Latin as well as French who often attended his lecture and participate in the discussion and he was fascinated by her.Consequently he negotiated an arrangement to board in her Uncle’s home in return for tutoring the precocious Heloise. As you may have guessed, fifteen year old Heloise became pregnant. Her uncle became furious. Heloise and Abelard married in secret to protect Abelard’s career in the church. Heloise’s uncle remained furious and took out his rage on Heloise. Abelard moved her to a convent for her protection. Her uncle thought Abelard was using the convent to abandon Heloise. He sent two ruffians to accost Abelard in his sleep and castrate him. They did. Abelard sought refuge in a monastery and commanded Heloise to remain in the convent. They stayed separated the rest of their lives, communicating only through letters. Both rose to become the head of their respective clerical orders. Heloise’s letters, discovered upon Abelard’s death, reveal a strong, passionate, erotic, unrequited relationship of many years. In the letters Heloise confesses that even in her prayers she can’t help but yearn for his physical, sexual embrace.Abelard died at 76 in 1164. Heloise died twenty years later and was buried next to him. When the cemetery where they were buried was sold and the surrounding buildings demolished during the French Revolution, their remains were brought to Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris “where they now lie under a soaring Gothic-style tomb. In time, lovers began to make pilgrimages to their grave,” (Yalom, page 2).When we discovered that Heloise and Abelard were in a cemetery in Paris, we had to go visit them. We took a subway to within two blocks of the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery gates.The cemetery was a special place with many famous people buried there, Jim Morrison, Gertrude Stein and many prominent figures in French history. The cemetery was like a small town with streets and graves lining the streets and small paths leading to graves behind the street-front graves. The monuments were amazing works of art, sculptures and pictures and engravings on marble tombs that were the size of a very large children’s playhouse which we were used to seeing in backyards in Nashville.Real and artificial flowers lay on some of the graves, especially the more famous ones, such as Jim Morrison and Gertrude Stein’s.We had trouble finding Heloise and Abelard’s tomb. It was on the opposite end from our entrance, down a curving cobblestone road and off to the edge, near the fence.As we walked, we observed a young couple holding hands. They too were lost, looking for Heloise and Abelard on their pilgrimage to somehow ask for the blessing of this legendary couple. Here we were, two couples, a sixty-eight year old one and the other a twenty something couple, looking down on the prone sculptured replicas of the bodies of Heloise and Abelard, posed as if they lay in state for mourners to view in passing.We stood by the grave together in silence for some time. As we left I hoped that couple received some spiritual strength and protection from Heloise and Abelard and I knew that we needed their blessings as well for the loses Marietta and I faced in the next and last part of our lives.According to Yalom, “the story of Heloise and Abelard was the charter text in the history of French love.”This story was the first of the romantic love stories from which all others derive, including Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Isolde, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenna, Romeo and Juliet. These stories first emerged in France. According to Yalom, something new emerged in French history because of this story. It was “a cultural explosion that proclaimed the rights of lovers to live out their passion.” Troubadours in song and in story proclaimed this right throughout the late middle ages, all over Europe, but especially France. Once sexual desire had been relegated to men, but after Heloise love/lust became a co-ed sport in France. In the Court of Marie of Champagne love trials were held enforcing the seven judgments of proper etiquette for lovers.Yalom’s primary point is that for the French, love is anchored in the flesh and for her this is an exciting premise, one that she advocates for all of us.Esther Perel is from Belgium, neighbor to France and arguably part of the French culture. She is a current leading expert on what she calls erotic intelligence. Her point is that eros or desire is based on novelty and mystery. Familiarity is the enemy of desire.This stands in contrast to what most American intimacy expert’s advocate, which is that truth and integrity are essential elements of intimacy. For Perel and Yalom and (according to them) the French, the truth can be the enemy of eros.Yalom tells the story of a French psychologist who advocates secrets because secrets promote mystery and mystery promotes desire.Isabelle and Christian imply that this sense of mystery may be more important to the wealthy French and the French movie stars, politicians and the French literati, than it is to ordinary French couples who do value commitment, integrity and loyalty. They speak as a French couple married for almost thirty years and both their parents were married over fifty years for life.The Caen Trip: The French Gave the Prize to Marfe Girl, Go FigureWe got up at 7:30 on Tuesday morning. This day we embarked on the second of the three legs of our trip.Our train left Le Gare de St. Lazare at 10:00 for Caen, France. We showered, packed, ate our last breakfast at our bakery, thanked our server for his kindness and left our small apartment, which, when we came, seemed so inhospitable but as we left, felt so comforting and familiar. We (or should I say I) feared leaving and going once again into the unknown.We took the subway to St. Lazare station. We allowed 45 minutes. We got there in twenty. It took ten more minutes to find the train platform. We found a train engine that said Caen on the front. We stood in front of that engine thinking that soon the rail cars would be attached, until we realized this train had just arrived from Caen. The departing Caen train was two platforms over. We got on the correct train and into our seats five minutes before the train left. Zip the train arrived in Caen at 11:55. I didn’t realize this was the Caen stop until two members of our Sister Cities group sitting in front of us stood and announced we had arrived.Nashville is a Sister City to Caen, France, a 200,000 person city in Normandy, not far from Omaha beach. Every year the bar associations of the two cities have an exchange. One year the Caen attorneys and their spouses come to Nashville, the next year the Nashville lawyers go to Caen. It was Nashville’s year to go and we were a part of this group.Our bags were heavy and difficult to unload, but we managed. Four of our group did not. As we got off the train, the doors of the train shut, taking those four to Bayeaux, the next stop down the line.The rest of us headed to a bus. We waited for a long time on a hot bus for the group leaders to figure out how to retrieve the four who were now on their way to Bayeaux. Finally, we were off to the city hall where we ate lunch, met our hosts and attended a legal seminar which served as a continuing education program for the French and American attorneys.Lunch was a stand up, mill about, eat finger food and drink apple cider, affair. I was tired, hot and my back ached. I hoped I could be civil as we met our hosts Florenz and Frank Lassere, both local school teachers, in their early thirties and both spoke excellent English. She was an English teacher. He taught business marketing. They were delightful and gracious.She was pushed into the role of translator for the local dignitaries who spoke welcoming words to our group.Finally, we were escorted to the city council chamber to listen to the presentation on how the laws and the court systems in America and France promoted equal pay for equal work for women (or did not). The talk was deadly for me. The first speakers spoke French and even if I could follow their French words, the sound resonated off the high ceiling and stone walls so that it was difficult to understand any speaker.Soon my head sunk to the table and I slept. I think my rudeness went mostly unnoticed.After the presentation Florenz took us to her home where we changed clothes for dinner, my only coat and tie moment. Because we were friends of the former mayor who was there and because Marietta is known to be facile with languages, we were seated at the dignitaries table. I was seated next to Francois who many assumed was the mistress of the head of the Caen Bar Association (or that was the general gossip). She spoke no English. I spoke a little French. My attempt to tell her about my reading of How The French Invented Love by Yalom and Heloise and Abelard failed. We sat next to one another in stone silence for the rest of the meal.Marietta sat next to the Vice Mayor who spoke some English to Marietta who spoke some French. They had an animated conversation. I felt I offended Francois somehow. Her body language toward me for the rest of our time in Caen seemed to suggest that.The next day, Bill Purcell, our former Mayor and Marietta cooked up the idea that we would rent the car we planned to rent a day early, slip away from our group and drive to D’eauville for the annual D’eauville American film festival. Marietta, after looking on line, found that it would only be 75 Euro more.So we told Steve Cobb, the organizer of the Nashville party of our plans, walked to the train station where Avis had an office. Once there we found out that the rate quoted Marietta on the computer was not available on site and we had to pay double what we expected. We paid and off we went to D’eauville, Kathy, Bill, me and Marietta. I drove. Marietta looked at the map and Bill intuited our direction and Kathy encouraged and reassured. Bill’s talent at picking the right turns with no prior knowledge amazed us. He just seemed to always know which way to turn. I followed directions from Bill and Marietta. We drove to D’eauville, found a convenient parking place near the festival theatres as Bill promised we would and found the place to buy a day pass all by following Bill’s nose.We saw two movies, Breath In and we arrived late for the second, a new Robert Redford movie, All is Lost. Once the second movie was over, we rushed to join our group. They arrived in D’eauville to attend a reception at the Villa de Strausberger. We were supposed to be fed there, but we only had very light hors d’oeuvres. The hungry party left there at 7:30 to attend an 8:00 movie, Marfa Girl.It was the worse movie I ever saw.There were sex scenes that left nothing to the imagination; some rape scenes, much gratuitous violence. Perhaps this might be forgiven if the script had been well-written, but the writing was horrible, lecture after lecture about the benefits of casual sex and a women’s right to be as sexually promiscuous as men.Now imagine thirty, mostly 50 years old attorneys and their wives, men in coats and ties and women in elegant dresses and their similarly aged and dressed French upper-middle class attorneys watching the movie.I sat next to Bill Purcell, the former Mayor. He had the urge to get up and walk out, but if he did, he was afraid he would insult our hosts. The French hosts couldn’t walk out and leave us Americans – it was an American movie after all.We were stuck, assaulted by images that weren’t erotic or artful, but just ugly, artless and mean. And mean writing that tried to justify by having the characters lecture about what we just saw. I couldn’t help but laugh at the inappropriateness of this and for once it wasn’t me causing the outrage. Later we learned that the French judges at the festival gave Marfa Girl the top award.We drove back to Caen and fumbled our way to the Lazarre residence. We had the key so we let ourselves in. As we began to settle in, an irate Florenz returned. No one had notified her that we weren’t on the bus. She was justifiably angry and worried about us, as any good host would be.We felt terrible for our lack of consideration. We apologized and she tried her best to forgive us.The Normandy BeachesThe next morning Frank was off to work and Florenz fed us a typical French breakfast, yogurt, fruit and pieces of a baguette with butter.We were off by 9:30. Today’s agenda was to travel to the beaches in Normandy where the allied forces landed in World War II. After going the wrong way on the Autoroute du soleil for 15 minutes, we finally found the coast and began the slow, small village to small village, one lane, speed bumped road to our first stop, Arromanche.We toured the local museum there commemorating Port Winston, the Allied port, imagined by Winston Churchill and built by Allied engineers in six days. The plan was to bring a bunch of large old boats to a point one and a half miles off the coast of Arromanche, sink the ships, forming a deep underwater reef to be used to attach floating concrete docks. From the docks a floating road would be built to the shore strong enough to support all of the allied troop’s heavy equipment, guns, trucks, and tanks. The plan worked flawlessly and because it did, allied forces never had to attack the well-defended French harbors which would have cost thousands more lives.Only a few ruins of the port remained today sticking out of the water. Seeing the mock-up of this amazing port in a waterfront museum was the most impressive part of this day for me.From there we traveled a few kilometers to the next beach town and the four German canon abatement's built 100 meters from the beach, able to hit precise targets as far as twelve miles away. These huge guns could fire six forty pound shells a minute. They were guarded by pit boxes equipped with machine guns that could fire 120 rounds per minute.We left there and headed for Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery there. I expected myself to be deeply moved by the graves and the beach. It was a beautiful place, but I don’t think I was able to take in the enormity of it all.What did impress me was the beach. We saw it at low tide. It as at low tide that our troops landed there in 1944. What we saw was a run of 50 yards of beach to firm soil and any hope of cover, then a hill or in some places cliffs that had to be climbed and secured.Amazingly it took only six hours and sadly cost 6,000 dead or wounded soldiers. Standing on that beach, it was hard to imagine how thousands more weren’t killed. How terrified these young men must have been. I feel inadequate to represent what this cemetery and this beach symbolizes.From there we went to Bayeaux, a small town about 20 kilometers inland from Normandy Beach. The focus here was on the Bayeaux Tapestry annotating the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The tapestry dates back to the 12th century.When we arrived, we parked the car in a parking area in the middle of Bayeaux, an interesting city of I would guess 50,000 people. As we got out of the car I wondered if we could ever find our way back to the car. People pointed us to the convoluted path to the museum.Since most people in the 12th century were illiterate, pictures were required to capture the story. Included in the story was a justification for the battle. Harold, William’s uncle while attending William’s father’s funeral, promised William that he would support William’s father’s wish that William rule England and Normandy. After he returned to Normandy, he reneged on his promise and declared himself king of Normandy. This, of course, meant that William had to go to Normandy and win back his throne, which he did in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.The tapestry was an off white linen cloth about 3 feet wide and 150 feet long. Figures were drawn with thread that reminds one of crewel work. Men, armor, ships, trees, horses, furniture, the sea, provisions, weapons among other things were sewn into the cloth in black, white, burnt orange, green, gold and red thread.When I put on my “can I appreciate art” hat, I saw how the artists showed movement in the way they drew the horses and anger in William when he heard his uncle had betrayed him and they did this with thread. When we left the museum we were able to anxiously trace our way back to the car. Proof that Alzheimer’s had not yet come.We thought we had plenty of time to drive back to Caen and catch our 6:50 P.M. train to Paris. We did not. We had barely enough time. We were relieved when we found ourselves seated in the last train car on our way to meet Isabelle and Christian who had invited us to stay with them for the weekend in their country home in Féricy, an hour’s drive east of Paris, near Fontaine-Bleu.Isabelle and Christian in Féricy: Quintessential French HostsWe arrived in Paris on the train at about 8:00 P.M., found the subway platform underneath the train station, boarded one subway line, transferred to another that would drop us off at Montparnasse very near Isabelle’s home and we emerged from the underground completely lost. Isabelle’s street was Rue de Maine and we were on Boulevard de Maine. We wandered about until Marietta lost patience with me using my instincts for where to go, then I hailed a cab. Fifteen minutes later we were at the Hotel Central, where Isabelle left a key to their apartment. After some time the hotel clerk discovered the key and we were moving down a happening night club/restaurant filled street with gaggles of twenty year olds laughing and talking on the sidewalks and in the street.One such gaggle was right in front of the door to Isabelle’s and Christian’s building. We punched in the code to open the first door to the building foyer, used a key to get through the door to the stairs. Four floors later we were standing in front of the apartment door with the three bolt locks on the door. Our key fit in the middle lock and opened the door.Paris appeared to be a very safe city, yet these extraordinary security measures were commonplace.We relaxed for a time in the apartment until Christian and Isabelle returned from a party, a surprise fortieth birthday party for Christian’s hand-picked younger colleague who Christian hopes will one day take his place at the University Hospital.This was a can’t miss affair for Christian. Isabelle had been up all night the night before with the stomach flu and Christian was coming down with a head cold.Yet, at midnight they loaded us into their car for a trip to Féricy and their country cottage. We arrived at 1:30 and were asleep by two.The next day we woke to look out at a backyard of green grass covered with yellow daisies about six inches tall. The blossom of the thousands of flowers opened in the light, closed and disappeared when the clouds came. They are mowed down each week or so and come right back.The “cottage” had three bedrooms, two baths, a large living room that opened to the backyard through a divided door that allowed one to open the top half while keeping the bottom closed. It opened onto a patio with a giant umbrella covered table that could seat eight and lounge chairs on the patio for sunning and reading.On the other side of the living room with an exposed brown timber ceiling was a dining room with a side door opening onto another patio that was naturally shaded by the living room and kitchen walls and several large apple trees. There, another large teak wood table sat waiting for six or eight chairs.A 15 X 25 foot kitchen with brand new stove, two sinks, a giant refrigerator and a center counter table extended from the dining room.Once awake, Marietta and I wandered into the kitchen to find Isabelle puttering about pulling out a baguette, some fine cured pork from Sardinia and some fruit (green plums, peaches, yellow cherries, giant purple figs that made a plate worthy of a still life portrait). She sliced the baguette into pieces and we had a delightful breakfast in the dining room.Soon Marietta and Isabelle were off to the Marché while I caught up on my writing seated outside under the umbrella as the yellow flowers opened and closed depending on the cloud cover and Christian worked in his study on his computer smoking his cigar.When Marietta and Isabelle returned, Christian emerged to see what they bought for him to cook. For dinner he was to become the evenings master chef using his new stove as Isabelle and Marietta prepared the salad, vegetables, cheeses and fruit.After Isabelle put away the food, we went for a hike. We drove about twenty minutes to a public wood’s with well marked paths. It felt as if we walked in a virgin forest. Large Chestnut, Plan and other trees I didn’t recognize created a canopy far above our heads. Giant ferns filled the forest floor. It felt as if gnomes and fairies were spying on us beneath the ferns as we walked.Isabelle took us on an uphill trail leading to an overlook that exposed the Seine River valley, filled with pastures, crops and winding tree-lined river banks below.As we came to the overlook, we intruded on the privacy of a young couple, who seemed to gather themselves and sit up straight as we arrived.When we returned home, dinner preparation began in earnest.I know no one will believe this but I tried to help. Each time I was thrown out of the kitchen. I was clearly no match for Christian who caramelized onions and tossed them in the skillet like a professional. His rice contained the onions and broth from the chicken thighs he cooked.This feast began about 9:30 and lasted until midnight. I began with a before dinner scotch, some white wine as the meal began, then red. We had yellow beans, chicken and rice, followed by a butter lettuce and tomato salad, then a plate of a variety of cheeses, camembert, etc. All accompanied by delicious fresh French bread. And then came the plate of fruit. I wish I could describe the tart sweetness of the green plums or the honey sweetness of the giant purple figs.The next day we awoke late. Isabelle gave me a copy of her research article to edit. She works in the hospital that treats most of France’s children with AIDS born from mothers with AIDS. Consequently, she has been uniquely placed to research the impact of her hospitals treatment of these patients and to evaluate their quality of life. What she found was that, like AIDS patients everywhere, with the right medication, these patients are now surviving. However, different from their cohort in the U.S. and elsewhere, they are thriving. They have dreams of great jobs and good relationships. They have good homes and supportive families. Clearly they are amazingly resilient. One wonders whether the French social net is the reason, e.g., free medical care, public transportation, paid family medical leave, free education, free family counseling (Isabelle’s job), more physically active daily life (people walk and ride bicycles a great deal in France. Isabelle walks to work every day and then to the Marché as do many other French people. The average French person walks two miles a day), more public parks, and more public art.When Isabelle finally found a moment to go over her paper with me, Marietta was restless. She was in France and was not going to sit still while Isabelle and I worked on her paper. She wanted to go to the town fair that we were hearing in occasional announcements from loudspeakers not too far away.After Isabelle gave her some directions, Marietta left to find the fair, confident she could find her way home. I never would have ventured out from Isabelle’s house without Isabelle or a GPS. But Marietta did and she had a great time.Isabelle and I improved the english wording in her paper.Supper was scrumptious leftovers from the previous night. I was keenly aware that Isabelle and Christian were tired and I wanted to be sure we helped get us on our way so Marietta and I packed and brought our bags downstairs.We offered to take them to dinner at a nice restaurant not far away on the bank of the Seine River. They refused because it would take too long and they wanted to return earlier than usual. This made no sense to us, until we figured out that eating out at a restaurant takes more time than eating at home because French expect to make much ceremony and take time to savor the meal at a restaurant, more time than a meal prepared at home. So we tried to help prepare dinner with Christiana and Isabelle.The first course was served. I ate as quickly as I could, not wanting to hold up Christian and Isabelle. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry though. As soon as I could I began taking plates to the kitchen. Isabelle received them standing next to the sink looking a bit askance at me as I brought in the plates.When I brought in the cheese, she became upset. “Dinner is not over. I haven’t served the fruit yet and you haven’t had any cheese.”I don’t think the words “hurry” and “eat so we can go” exist in France. Both Isabelle and Christian seemed a bit irritated at the thought that dinner might be cut short. No, they usually leave Sunday night at 11:00 and get to Paris after midnight. The traffic is easier then. They don’t go to work on Monday until 10:00.I want to share Isabelle’s reply email a week after we arrived home to show that Isabelle and Christian are hosts to so many people:

Dear Marietta and David,

You almost missed the plane, my goodness, at what time did you get on the bus then ?

We are back to Féricy and it is raining cats and dogs. The grass has grown and the flowers are even more coloured; I just opened my computer to work on my article and found your so kind email; we are on our own both of us and it is perfect to work although it is already 6:30 pm; our friend who has a little wooden house along the river (close to the restaurant "l'anneau de Mallarmé" where we will go another time with you) our friend who has a lung cancer is coming for dinner tonight. So before working on the article, I just washed a salad, prepare the so famous yellow beans and cooked a marmelade of reine-claude, that is the green plums that you liked so much. With some remaining crème fraîche of last week it should be delicious;

I recovered only on Thursday from my digestive infection. I got my energy back and felt quite more intelligent and adjusted to the world. I am sorry, I must have looked tired and not very dynamic and smiling; I was just ko. But we shared a lot and we had a good time anyway.

Yes, I worked last week with the physicians on my article. They completed the missing data regarding the patients that I had not seen and the statistician will compare the 2 groups. Apparently it seems that many of those that I haven't seen are doing well and have good family functioning. This is good for me. Now I have to record all these data on an excell table. Then I will work on David's comments. I share David's ideas with the physicians and they appreciated a lot David's suggestions. That encourages me a lot to keep working on it and finish as soon as possible. But the patients keep me busy all week. I will make it anyway.

Charlotte met a new family yesterday to consider to share the nanny but this family happened to be crazy functioning and they won't go on with this one. No more offer for the moment. Arnaud did not get any promising appointments to get a job, so they are both waiting...I will cheer them up next week if needed.

Elisa, Thomas and Jacques must be continuing setting up their new apartment and must be very busy. I will call them tomorrow. Jacques called me on the phone last Tuesday evening; He wanted to talk to me and he told me all about his new life. He was cute and is very happy. I will give you your book the next time I see him. I am sure he will love it since it is all about a song he knows very well and the drawings are great! Christian just moved from his computer to the kitchen to fix the chicken for tonight.

Marietta, we enjoyed so much to share these 2 days with you in Féricy. You now figure better what our life is and since you are close friends we were very happy to spend these times with you both. Next time we will go the the Fontainebleau castle. This morning I thought about you since I heard on the radio that today and tomorrow are the days for patrimoine, that means that all the privet or monuments that are usually closed to the public get opened to everyone. You would love to go and visit some places. We have to plan that in the future, although there will be people of course.

Now I go to my excell table to work on it a little bit...Please keep in touch…Hugs and kisses to you both…

Isabelle

Clearly Isabella and Christian are generous kind thoughtful people who open their home and hearts to many people including us, their friend who has lung cancer, their children and grandchildren. And food and conversation over food is central to how they show their love. And though Isabelle and Christian are uniquely warm and welcoming, there is something about them, I think, that represents French culture and hospitality.The Return to Paris: The Pull of the BarnWe left Féricy about 10:00 P.M., an early departure for Christian and Isabelle. We arrived in Paris, checked in Hotel Central and were in bed by midnight. When we awoke the next morning around 8:30, I could feel the barn of home pulling on me. My only real agenda was not to miss the plane tomorrow.We had breakfast at a café on Isabelle’s street, a croissant, ham and some tea. Then we went to find the spot next to the Montparnasse station where the airport buses parked that left for the airport every thirty minutes on the hour and half-hour. We found the spot, two blocks away, no problem. Plane left at 10:50. That meant to us that we needed to catch the 8:00 A.M. bus that would put us there at 8:45, in plenty of time.We puttered about, went to a museum that was a cross between rococo décor and the Louvre. I have forgotten the name. We walked by the Seine to see again if we could discover exactly what is was about the Paris light and color that so many Americans who came to Paris speak of. We walked again down a long stretch of the Champs Elysée. Then we took a subway to Kathy Celaro’s hotel, Hotel Demi, near the Tuilleries Garden, a block off the Rue de Rivoli.I was tired, irritable and ready to get on the plane. Marietta may have been as well. She seemed to want to spend her last night in Paris at a fine (expensive) restaurant. I felt guilty about letting Paris and France extort the amount of money we spent or lost (lost 160 Euro, car rental internet price 100 Euro, actual cost 180 Euro, a bag we didn’t need to bring back books 50 Euro, an airport bag charge 70 Euro, meals the French consider inexpensive that weren’t, meals the French considered expensive that were, cokes that cost more than wine, subway passes that did not work, lost museum pass 50 Euro). And the atmosphere at an expensive restaurant was the same as an inexpensive restaurant and we knew that food in Paris is always excellent, cheap or expensive.I didn’t say all this because Kathy was with us. We went to Rosés, a tapas restaurant, not far from Kathy’s hotel and had a wonderful custard tart for dessert, the best dessert I had in Paris.We got to Hotel Central at 10:30, packed and asleep by 11:00; awake the next morning at 7:05, showered, checked out and waiting for the bus at 7:40. Bus left at 8:00 on schedule. I felt anxious as I always do at these boundaries (Yvonne Agazarian reminds us “always expect turbulence at the boundaries”).Apparently there was an accident on the Autoroute du soleil (their interstate). Our bus driver masterfully negotiated around what looked like an interstate turned into a parking lot. We arrived at 9:20, got out at the wrong end of the terminal, raced until we found Delta gates, endured the slow process of checking in and slower process of getting through passport check and slower process of getting through security. But we made it to our gate with the plane boarding, again very slowly.On the plane, in our seats, Marietta went to pull out her iPad and realized she left it at security. We took off without the iPad.We didn’t even really try to sleep. Marietta watched movies. I read, wrote, and watched movies. We arrived in Cincinnati on time. Customs took forever. Our bags were arriving as we emerged from customs. We claimed them, rechecked them and boarded our plane to Nashville. Bonnie and Greta met us at the Nashville airport. We fell in our bed twenty-two hours after we woke that morning in Hotel Central.The next day I went to work exhausted, feeling a cold coming. It came. I got through the week barely. On Sunday I didn’t move out of the chair in the living room. I was a bear to live with that week, exhausted, sick from a cold with piles of work to deal with upon my return (another cost of travel), yet eleven days back I can say unequivocally, I’m glad I went.As an aside, Marietta emailed the De Gaulle Airport lost and found about her iPad and got no help. She emailed Isabelle and asked her to call and suddenly Marietta’s iPad emerged. Marietta called Fed Ex and one month and five days later, her iPad returned home.Lessons LearnedSo back to my three quests: 1. To throw off the parochial defenses of my father and absorb the unique beauty and charm of France and Paris, 2. To allow art to move me and 3. To better understand the unique French culture and appreciate the character of the French people. So to my first pilgrimage and my quest to understand my father’s and my negative set toward travel.Remember what he said when he returned from a trip abroad. I listened to my self-talk inside my brain wondered if I would be tempted to say my version of what he said. That version would go like this, “I had a good time. I’m glad I went. I thought Caen, Paris, Féricy and France were nice. And I learned one thing and that was that America is the greatest country in the world and Nashville, Tennessee is the best place I’ve ever been.”I’m proud to say that was not what I heard rattling about in my brain. What I heard myself say was that Paris is the most amazing city I have ever seen. Where else do they trim the trees to create a line only because it looks good to the eye? Where does water pour out of the gutters each day and run along beside the curb washing debris pushed into the current by special street cleaning trucks. Where is attention given to cleaning lights and collecting trash all day every day in the public parks? Where will you find a place with so many beautiful public sculptures, ornamented bridges, flickering lights, the Eiffel Tower? What city cares so much about it city scape that only one large modern skyscraper exists in a city of two and a quarter million people and the metropolitan area of around twelve million people? What city contains more works of art? What city better supports art? Where in the world will you find a better meal than one you will eat in Paris? Where is there a better public transportation system? Where will you find kinder, gentler, warmer, people than Frank and Florenz in Caen, France or Isabelle, Christian, Charlotte and Arnold in Paris?No, Nashville is no Paris, France. As a place to live Nashville has been good to us. What I value most about Nashville are my roots here, my friends whom I love and love me, my clients whom I love to serve, the green grass and green trees that jump out of the ground and filter the sunlight, that transform from green to oranges, yellows and reds in the fall and into amazing lines cutting the sky into various fascinating shapes of gray or blue or pink and purple as the sun sets in the winter.If I were beginning my adult life, had the option and could learn French, I would take a shot at living in Paris for a time and in Park City, Utah. I’m not my father. I know there may be and probably are many better places to live than Nashville, Tennessee and the quality of life in France is at least as good as that in the U.S. as witnessed by the support France has given to their children born with AIDS and the contrasting opportunities for a good life that France seems to offer them versus what America offers those who have similarly suffered here or contrast the way the French culture nurtures their children to become adults who love beauty more than money and who focus on love more than power, whose parents attend to them, but don’t center their lives around them.So no, I don’t see Nashville and the U.S. as better as my father felt compelled to do with Arkadelphia, Arkansas. But I do feel something akin to what I think he felt.Foreign travel terrifies me, as I think it did him. I think Marietta finds it exciting, interesting and fun. I’m glad she does. But much of the time I’m frightened of my lack of mastery and my inadequacy.What I think my father loved about Arkadelphia was that there he knew what to expect and how to behave. There he was somebody. He had a finger in about everything that happened there. He was a big fish in that pond (sorry, too many metaphors).In France I did not know where I was most of the time, I tried but I could not speak the language (although contrary to what most say about the French, language was rarely a problem and the French we met were very gracious toward us). Every attempt to unlock the door to our apartment building was another terrifying moment of wonder if this would be the time I could not make the key work. Everything was a negotiation with Marietta or Marietta and others. This put a lot of stress on our relationship. Often I was exhausted and needed to sit or lay down and there was no place for that. Often one of us wanted to do this and the other wanted to do that. It took me three days after arriving in France to have energy or to feel like my legs were under me. Everything cost more than I wanted to pay. Walking everywhere was good for us but we were often tired because of that (We thought since we walked 10,000 steps a day, we could eat anything and not gain weight. Wrong). The food was too good and the wine too plentiful. In Nashville routine is my friend. There is no routine when we travel.As we became familiar with one neighborhood or when we were safe in the arms of Isabelle and Christian, I was much less afraid.This fear of my inadequacy and the unfamiliar is what I think I share with my father and what I believe to be the engine behind his pompous parochialism. If he is looking over my shoulder now as I write, I think he would acknowledge that he was afraid like me, that he liked being the well-known, civic leader, successful attorney and without this armor he was afraid. I know my ego is dependent on the identity of Dr. David McMillan, married to Judge Marietta Shipley of Nashville, Tennessee.In Paris I am nobody until I am with Christian and Isabelle. Then I am the friend and that’s all. But really that’s enough for me. But we weren’t with them all the time.I became proud of our ability to navigate Paris and the subway system on our own. We were often lost but we always found ourselves. I am much less afraid of Paris than I was.The question I must ask myself to authentically represent myself is: Was it worth it?The answer lies in the quest or the pilgrimage. As you may recall in each of the journeys reported in this journal, I have fashioned a quest for each trip. The quest for Italy was to find Frances Maye’s (of Under the Tuscan Sun fame) home and to see if I could discover her Italy. On our trip to Provence with Christian and Isabelle, my quest was to see if I could be a good traveling companion to Marietta, a good guest of Isabelle and Christian and enjoy myself. In Nantucket it was to see if I could face aging and the contrast of a time there when I was younger and a time when I did not have what I had then. The quest in Spain was could I look at my narcissism as reflected in Hemmingway, Picasso and the Spanish culture and find a way to like myself.I have now spoken to the internal journey to move beyond that part of me that are the fears of the unknown which I share with my father. I have yet to summarize what I have learned from my two remaining quests. One about understand and appreciating French culture and the other seeing if I can appreciate art. Now I will change subjects and examine what I learned about the French people.Certainly we Americans have our fantasies about the French. In the 1800s American’s visiting Paris discovered grisettes, young French girls who made themselves available to serve the interests of wealthy French men as their mistresses. These women often worked for a very low wage in men’s clothing store in hopes of meeting wealthy men who would choose to support them and the illegitimate children that hopefully would come from this relationship.According to McCullough 40% of the children born in Paris in the 1830s were from such relationships.Currently the term “grisettes” has little recognition in France. Isabelle, Charlotte, Armond, and Christian have never heard of it.According to Isabelle and Christian these notions of sex outside marriage and marital secrets are part of the upper class French society, Politicians, CEO’s , movie stars, etc. Like in the U.S., ordinary French persons value commitment, loyalty and integrity in their relationships and they are less interested in secrets.What I think Isabelle and Christian would acknowledge that Yalom and Perel observe is that love for the French involves the senses, the eyes, the mouth, touch, taste and sound.The French do seem to be better lovers than fighters, better parents than builders of wealth. In World War II they capitulated to the Germans. In the time of the Paris Commune Revolt of the late 1800s, they turned against one another with a ferocity and meanness that shocked the world’s sensibilities. Their political parties are fractious and finding political consensus in France is difficult. French politics were a joke to our French hosts in Caen. In World War II they allowed their young men to be conscripted into the German army. Only 1,000 French men fought on the side of the allies. Their economy is known for its ineffectiveness.Yet, when it comes to quality of life and love and family, who makes love in all the ways one can speak of love better than the French, as evidenced by how Frank and Florenz welcomed us into their home, as Isabelle and Christian attended to their children and grandchildren and us.Yes, the French have a thing about the importance of erotic love as evidenced by the couples we saw caressing in ways Americans would not, by the way French women were comfortable with their bodies, by the fact that a horrible film with more sex than Americans can tolerate won the prestigious Déauville American Film Festival award for best picture in 2013. (I still can’t comprehend this. To me it has more to do with the excesses of the Paris Commune than with civilized French society.)I don’t want to pretend that I am an expert in French culture, but I have great respect for the quality of life France provides its people, from the children born with AIDS in France to the families who tend to one another and their children, to the love shown publicly by lovers, to the food cooked with such care and ceremony and served to create a gentle kind atmosphere for friends and family to share their feelings and thoughts together at a beautiful dinner table.As to my third quest or pilgrimage, I wanted to see if could pry my mind open using Camille Paglia’s Images as a crowbar. Could my soul be touched by art? I didn’t think so, but I wanted to give Camille Paglia and her 29 images a fair shot at my heart.You may remember, my interpretation of her thesis is that these images represent arts ongoing conversation with our collective soul. She believes we as a species are evolving. (Hopefully she is right because if she is not and our technological process moves beyond our moral evolution, we will destroy all human life on the planet.)So here is how I see it after taking Paglia’s challenge. This is the score tally. (Permit me to summarize and repeat some of what I wrote earlier).Art in prehistory focused on creating images that contained the gods and appeased them. People were subject to nature and used art hoping to make nature a benign force. The history of art starts with humans searching for more power, afraid to believe or have faith in each other or themselves. Art is a progressive democratic movement making steps toward valuing each human life and moving toward respect for women and vision toward human equality and power.The first step in this evolution began in Egypt. In 1290 B.C. art moved from trying to capture magic from the gods of nature to joining some human beings with the gods. Art became about resurrection, life after death and the divinity of emperors and empresses who were gods on earth (obviously because of their immense earthly authority) and were destined to journey to the hereafter upon their death. Much of art in that time focused on the journey of the god/emperor etc. to the hereafter.The art was commissioned and prescribed by the powers that be. It was flat, two dimensional and the artist was not known or recognized, but Egyptian art did move beyond fear of god and the use of images to superstitiously control nature into a limited connection to human empowerment and freedom, a small but significant step. I got it. This art moved me. Paglia 1, me 0.The next step came with Hellenistic art. Greek artists were known, respected and acknowledged for their work. Art in Greece became realistic and three dimensional in sculpture. The focus included the great and powerful, but it shifted to include the heroism, athleticism and beauty that emerged from the general population. Art celebrated heroic warriors, women at the peak of their beauty choosing to subordinate themselves in service to their community and the gods. Art for the Greeks of this time showed the Greeks as honoring their gods – “not through genuflection or self-abuse but through assertions of human value and pride.” Paglia 2, me 0.Paglia has many steps in the evolution that I will skip here. I won them all. For me the next step that impressed me was David’s painting of the slaying of Murat. In between the Hellenistic art and David’s painting were moves back and forth between the representation of life’s tragedy and pain as in the Laocoön and Donatello’s Mary Magdalene and Titian representation of sensuality and human pleasure. These movements back and forth between tragedy and pleasure or from hedonism/narcissism (rococo, art deco, Titian, Bernini, Van Dyke), to tragedy/victim-hood and species pity (Hagia Sophia, Donatello’s Mary Magdalene, Picasso’s Guernica) moved toward more and more inclusion of the common human being. Paglia 2, me 4.David’s painting of Murat’s death shifted art’s focus to include actual human events. In this painting David grieves for the death of his friend and hero, Murat and advocates for a democratic French republic. This cast art into real life human events and made political statements. Paglia 3, me 4.Paglia does not choose the Manet painting that I believe represents the next major shift in art. She chose another Manet. The Manet I would choose is the picnic scene of two well-dressed gentlemen sitting in a park near a pond while one woman bathes in the pond behind them and another sits beside one of the men next to a turned over basket of food (Le déjuener sur l’herbe). In this and other Manet paintings he depicts, not reality but the wished for, yearned for, imagined reality of the two men alone sharing a picnic. Manet took a grand leap from painting what artists saw out in front of them to painting what he saw inside his head. This opened the door to all of human imagination. It created a whole new world where the artists can truly express themselves and people can communicate more intimately than ever before. Paglia 4, me 4.Manet was followed by Monet, the expressionists and the pointillists. They took another giant step toward bringing people closer to art. They painted with more color than form requiring the viewer of the art to discover the form as the viewer looked carefully into the picture and when one carefully examined the painting, one’s own imagination put the form together to create an image. The image then was a co-creation of the artist and the viewer. People who viewed the art became part of the artistic enterprise, bringing all who saw the painting into the artists creative process.This was a huge leap. You can see this in Irises, the Monet that Paglia nominates as life changing. At first glance you won’t see the flowers. As you look again, you can see a long rectangular bed of what could be irises out of focus. And as you look closer that must be what it is.It is exciting to discover form inside of color and discover what the artist sees as well. Paglia 5, me 4.The next major art event that moved my consciousness was my visit to the Pompidou Musée. I described it earlier. I was loathe to go to this modern art warehouse, a large building that looks out of place in Paris, more like a warehouse with giant metal pipes climbing vertically up the sides than an art museum. I expected to continue my diatribe against modern art in this place but I tried to open my mind. As I wrote earlier, I was somewhat taken with Asse’s rectangular brush stroke of blue color.But when I came to this 6 X 4 foot canvas with a two inch red spot in the center with a scribble of a black ink pen over and around the spot trailing to the left edge of the canvas, I was sure I had my proof of another hoax being played on the public and being passed off as art.I started my rant, “How can this be art?”“Well did you read the commentary next to the painting?” Marietta asked.“Okay I’ll read it. It says it’s about Odysseus and his son Telemachus who died in battle wearing his father’s armor so that the troops would follow him into battle, a battle Odysseus decided to sit out and to spend in prayer instead. “So where is the armor or the dead body?”“Well the red spot is death.”“Yeah, I’ll give you that.”“The chaotic scribbling about the red spot represents the overwhelming confusing grief he felt.”“Okay, now that you say that, I can see it.”“And the large mostly empty white canvas represents the emptiness of his life, now that his son was dead.”“I’ll be damned. You have something there. That’s art. I get it.”And as I wrote earlier, this picture remained in my head. I see it now. It changed my life. I will never think of art in the same way again. I give up Paglia. You win.The next day, as I wrote earlier, I found Picasso’s nude in the L’Orange and that woman was no enticing nymph of one of Renoir’s paintings. She was a woman to be reckoned with, intense, powerful, dangerous. She represented my fear of women and how powerful a woman can be once she gets inside one’s head. Yes, I get it Picasso. I’m afraid of women, especially naked women, too. Picasso saw and depicted women in a whole new way, empowering, respecting and even fearing women as individuals with their own intention and their own agenda, people to be reckoned with, equal to any man. Art has pushed humankind forward one more step toward equality and democracy.So Paglia was right. These images changed my life. I will never look at art the same way again. I will look a second and a third time for the energy that the artist put into their work that is still there until I feel what words can’t express.So to answer the question: was going to France worth it?Yes, it was and the reason was my quest. Without the challenge to expand my psyche, it would not have been. Paglia’s book opened the door for me to build something new for myself. I am pleased that I was able to.I am grateful to her for being my guide and to Marietta for enduring my complaints.The quest took my fear and put it to good use. Rick Steve’s said that travel expands the brain and I believe that. The brain cells create new pathways when new experience is combined with the right amount of stress and tension. And on this trip new experience was combined with stress and tension, thus expanding my brain, putting off Alzheimer’s a couple of years.