Oh man. So, where the heck have I been, right?
Well: France!
That is. First I was sick, and uninteresting. And then I was too busy doing interesting things to write about them.
So, starting from the most recent and working my way back in time:
Yesterday morning, I was part of an educational panel at the Marchutz school. The IAU is trying to determine what the "identity" of Marchutz is and whether or not they are effective. The theme of the meeting was expectations. Alan asked me to come as an example of a current student to speak about what my expectations of study abroad were. Basically, it was a lot of people who should not be in education looking down their noses at the only part of IAU where students are learning, working, and having their eyes generally opened. There were a couple exceptions who were into students and teaching students though. But seriously. I never want to be part of academia.
Then they kicked me and Mary (the alumni student) out to talk about the issue (the fact that they did not have students at this part of the meeting was a stupidity and made me thankful that the majority of my education took place at a school like Athenian), and I went and hung out with John. I helped him gather tinder and set up a barbecue and move chairs and stuff. It was fun! And then there was delicious food and interesting people.
I find that I am spending way more time hanging out with John and Alan than with people my own age. And I am not talking about class. I am talking about getting drinks with them after our field trips and stuff. Is that bad? I don't know. I think that they are more interesting than the majority of people my own age that I have been meeting.
Anyway, there were 30-some people there yesterday (John lives at the atelier, by the way) to say goodbye to John's son Yohaan, who is returning to Colorado soon and was also in Japan for a long time. They all watched a slide show and it made me feel guilty about not having finished looking at Ilian's pictures. It was good though, and I met some people who I think will be able to put me in touch with the happening French youth in Aix. You know, the ones who like things besides drinking and flirting. I am sure there must be some.
I also played with Alan's four-year-old son, James, and his friend Sam. They did not trust me at first, but then I started talking to them about dinosaurs. Then we started playing dinosaurs, and I ended up covered in dirt because OBVIOUSLY I was the evil dinosaur who was trying to eat their eggs, so they had to kill me several times. Then Sam lost his marble and was really upset about it. We tried to look for it in the grass, but to no avail, so I created a magical marble for him that is invisible unless you have an imagination. It can change sizes and colors, and if you turn into a ring and wear it on your finger it allows you to see fairies. And, most importantly, you don't have to worry about losing it, because if you clap your hands and say "Shim-Shim-Shee!" it immediately goes back to your hand again. Obviously, James got one too, and he spent the rest of the day intentionally dropping his marble just so he could say "Shim-Shim-Shee!" and kept asking me to tell him more magic words. Their mothers were impressed. I think I have a baby-sitting gig this week.
My throat still hurts a little from all the roaring I did when I was a dinosaur though.

So, the day before that, we had our second Marchutz excursion to Arles and St. Remy. Arles is super pretty and Roman. Also, we went another monastery I can't remember the name of at the moment. Arles is where Van Gogh settled towards the end of his life, and St. Remy is the asylum he stayed at. The whole day was about Van Gogh. We went to several of the places where he painted and compared the actual place to a reproduction of the painting he made of it, looking at what he kept in the painting and what e left out and exaggerated. It was very interesting, but I wanted to weep all day. I don't mean this as an unfortunate thing. I just find Van Gogh very moving, not just in his paintings, but in what his life was and in his writing. Have you ever read any of Van Gogh's letters? He writes beautifully and with great passion. It is heartbreaking. He was really brilliant. People think that his painting were the work of a madman, but it isn't true. He did experience madness, yes, but he never painted when he was mad. All his work comes from a place of crystalline lucidity. I think it was Gaughin who said, "his paintings contain great thought." And he only worked for ten years! I wish I could see the sky as he did, with all that texture. You know, he tried to learn piano, but the teacher refused to keep teaching him because he would find a single note and just play it over and over again saying, "Ah. That. Right there. A clear blue with a bit of citron yellow."
All of it, it makes me want to weep.
An interesting thing about St. Remy: It is still a functioning asylum. They do a lot of art therapy there, and they have the art of the patients hanging up all over the place. It is very impressive stuff! Matt, who much prefers modern work, was photographing all of it like crazy with a huge grin on his face. "Is it a bad sign that my favorite stuff we've looked at today was made by crazy people?" he asked.
"All things considered, I think that is appropriate," I replied, though I wish he was able to appreciate the old as well as the new. I think I am lucky, that I am able to love so many things. It lights up my life.
I slept for the whole bus ride back and then I had a drink with John, Nance, Becky(a visiting American writer), and Kathleen (Alan's wife) and we talked about Van Gogh and the day and stuff. It was great. I told John about how I was really moved by the intense connection between Vincent and his brother Theo, since I have three brothers and they are kind've the universe to me. It was Theo who got Vincent through everything, Theo who recognized that his brother was a genius and supported his painting, and when Vincent took his life, Theo was broken by it and died about six months later. It is the freaking saddest thing ever.
After the drink, I went home for dinner. I came in and they cried, "Carla! Champagne?" all grinning around the table. I laughed. "What's the occaison?" I asked. "Champagne!" they cried.
I. Love. My. Homestay.
Then, I had a french-american crepe party arranged by myself and my friend Geoffrey. It was my job to bring the americans, but most of the americans I knew had run off to different cities for the weekend or were recovering from the illness that is still going around (I kicked it, myself, by not going out and not drinking until I was better. They are bewildered as to why they are still sick. Hm...), so I only was able to bring Matt with me, but nonetheless, a jolly good time was had by all. However, they played the most ridiculously complicated drinking game EVER, which is called biscuit, and I kept messing up because there were so many rules and I was learning them is rapid french. I think they knew that and were taking advantage of it. HIGHLY UNGENTLEMANLY.

The day before that, I had my oral presentation in Archaelogy which is worth 25% of my grade. So, you know, no big. I did it on the site of Terra Amata, in Nice. I am hoping that the fact that I actually went to Nice specifically to visit the in situ museum will count for something. But man, beside that, I must admit I SUPER procrastinated on that one. Sigh. Some things, they just don't change...


The days before that were colored by what we've bee doing at Marchutz, which is painting in the country. Everyday, I walk the half-hour to the Atelier, grab my easel and painting supplies, and a bus takes us to the countryside around Mt. St. Victoire, which is the mountain Cezanne is known for painting. It is pretty awesome. I have been struggling some though, with the painting. I realized, as we started working with oils a couple weeks ago, that I don't know a thing about painting. I have been an artist all my life, but really, it's all been drawing and ink. I mean, I know my way around color relationships because of all the work I've down with oil pastels and water-color crayons, but that still doesn't help me when I am faced with a big old palette of paints that I have to some how mix and bring into a believable harmony of colors the reperesent in some small way the vast reality before me.
Guys, painting is hard.
I feel like I made a breakthrough on monday though, which was the first say I set my easel up in front of the mountain. Alan has been saying to me, "Use your paintbrush like you use your pencil," and I feel like that started to happen, and I got a little more sensitivity in my marks again, like I do when I draw. However, I think this happened not thank to the beauty of the mountain or any brilliance on Alan's part as a teacher or mine as a student. I think it happened because I finally remembered to bring food with me that day, and it is easier to paint well when you have bread and chocolate. That is all.
There is something comedic about painting outside. I think it is a sort of idyllic thing to a lot of people, but a lot of it consists of things like keeping the wind from blowing your easel over, and trying to figure out how to set up in the shade without getting attacked by the tree that creates the shade, and keeping the damn bugs from committing suicide in your paint.
I love it, though.
Wednesday I felt like I started to get the hang of it even more. I found a PERFECT spot. I looked around the while, trying to pick what to paint, since I had done the mountain the day before. Ultimately, I gave up and painted the mountain again. Sometimes, when there is a giant mountain in front of you, you just have to paint the freaking mountain. It was fun. I listened to Radiohead and ate a baguette while I worked.

Monday was rainy and I did a bad thing. I had to meet Kat to get her camera, as it had some picture I needed for my archaeology project. It was the meeting place that did me in: we met at Book in Bar, an English bookshop and coffee bar in downtown Aix. I haphazardly made my way there, a bit late and still befuddled by my rather busy weekend. The sky was the deep purple-gray it gets before a big storm, lovely and rather ominous. Now, if you were exhausted and found yourself surrounded by coffee, pastries, books, and comfy chairs, and it started to rain outside, what would you do? You would stay inside, that's what! And that is what I did that day, instead of working on my archaeology presentation and going to class at Marchutz as I meant. Judge me, if you will. I needed a rest, and I had a lovely day. Besides, because of the rain, it wasn't as though we could go out and paint in the country anyway. It was just copying of masterworks that I missed. So. Pthbt!
Then that night I had my first theater class at the Institute for Foreign Students

It is worth mentioning that the writing of this blog at this point was interrupted by an eight-year old french girl named Dané, who quietly demanded my attention in the way only timid children can. She is just starting to learn english in school, so I showed her the original english versions of many disney songs on youtube.
It was fun. There was lunch. It involved pasta, vietnamese rice wine (SO MUCH STRONGER THAN SAKE), and chocolate cake.

For the next bit, I am going to start at the beginning of the weekend. On saturday, we had our first Marchutz excursion, to the Luberon, which is a mountain range in southern France. The day was to be one of meditation on the subject of architecture. We began with a really lovely drive through the country side, with a few stops here and there, where John talked us about things such as why pigeon towers had a metal ring to keep rats away, and the mysterious gypsy-curse incited death of Camus. Alan was not there, sadly, he was busy being an administrator (bleh!), but his badass wife Kathleen was. To give you an idea of Kathleen's hotness: She and Alan went shopping for a party they were having, once, and the cashier told Alan it was nice of him to buy alcohol for his daughter. She is also a super awesome writer though, and highly amusing. She owes me a dessert though.
But I digress.
The first town we went to was called Bonnieux. Well, first we stopped outside of it a bit, and sat on this strange set of stone steps set randomly into the brush to the side of the road and contemplated it from a view something like this: The idea was to look at how it was set into he nature around it and all the color and compositional harmonies and stuff. It was cool. Then we walked into town, and I nearly murdered John for talking. Those of you who have met any of the Lerner clan know that bad things happen to our temperaments when we are hungry *coughByroncough* and I am no exception. Granted, it was John, so it was fascinating stuff, but it is very difficult to care about the compositional genius of an awning when you need to eat. Eventually, he let us free and Kat and I went food hunting. Well, actually, first we went to the church, to our frustration, because it made mre sense time wise and we were hungry, no foolish. But then we bought SO MUCH FOOD. We went to two bakeries and a grocery store. Did I mention that we were hungry? I got this cool hotdog in a pastry which was delicious and, somehow, still classy. France, man. Anyway, once I had eaten I was able to appreciate that walking through Bonnieux is like walking through a city in your dreams. It is carved into the mountain, and the streets wind and curve at just the right angle to make you feel like what you are looking for is just around the bend. I don't know if that makes sense, but it is really cool, full of random caves and tunnels and flowery verandas and carved faces and strange obelisks. I liked it.
Then we went to a town called Lacoste, which is on lands that once belonged to the infamous Marquis de Sade. We had a picnic in a glade in the woods, and Kat and I had a lovely, sprawling lunch with our bounty from Bonnieux. We had: The best baguette I have had in France so far, a wonderfully soft and stinky local cheese I have forgotten the name of, a spinach kiesh, a cheese souffle-thing, two apples, an orange, a plum, an almond croissant, and an eclair. It ruled.
Then we drove for a while, and then we went on a charming one-hour hike to a Bori, which was hard on my ankle, but worth it. When John told us about it we said, "what is a Bori?" He sort of half-raised his eyebrows and said, "I will tell you that when we get there." I think he enjoys being mysterious. I didn't mind, but it drove some of the other students nuts, which was pretty funny. Anyway, we had a nice hike through the forest and then we arrived at a strange stone dwelling which, if it had a speech bubble, would have been saying, "Old-old-old-old-old-old-old-old-old-old-old." It was one of those things, where no one has to tell you. You just look at it and feel, "damn, that is old" with an accompanying sense of wonder and desire for a time machine. "This," said John, "is a Bori." We went inside, single-file, through the tall, narrow entryway. It was very hot outside, but the minute you were in those walls it was cool and pleasant. We silently filed into an oval room in the back with some stone benches built into the walls. It was dim, but as my eyes adjusted I saw a great deal of detail in the room. Just as I was wondering how it was made and where it came from, John broke the silence. "These walls, he said, have no mortar. They were made with nothing wet, they have no adhesive. These walls were simply built by placing the stones you see in such a way that they would hold each other up." The stones did not look cut. They were all rough and of varying sizes. I realized then that these stones had simply been found as they were and somehow been used to create an extraordinary and complex order in structure. "This may seem like a simple structure to you," continued John, "but it is in fact rather complex and uses a lot of very subtle and difficult architecture." He went on to point out different way the wall was shaped here and formed there that were basically works of genius, once you knew what you were looking at. Apparently, in the 70's Marchutz was called a "School of Vision." I think that that is rather apt. As if that wasn't crazy enough, no one actually knows how old the Bori is, who built it, or what it was for. There are some Bori's that have been dated, he mentioned one nearby that was from the 12th century, but apparently it doesn't actually give a basis for dating other Boris and there was no way of knowing when the one we were in came from. IT WAS SO COOL. Speaking of, cool as it was then, apparently it is warm inside it in the winter. Insulation! With rocks! Super nifty.
Then we hiked back and found the lame classmates (three of them) who had ditched us when John was looking. They were all, "we are tired. We don't feel well." In my brain I responded with, "I just got over the same cold you have and my ankle is still healing. You are just weak sauce." But I know that that isn't nice and that we are all different people, so out loud I just offered them some water and asked if they were feeling better. Sometimes, when I can't make my brain as nice as I want it to be, I at least make sure that my actions are as nice as I want my brain to be.
Then we went to the monastery of Senanque, which was pretty amazing. it is a 12th century monastery belonging to a Cistercian order, so we ladies had to make sure we were decently covered (no shorts or tank tops) and we didn't interact with the monks as they are under a vow of silence. It was legit. Senanque is surrounded by lavender fields and I imagine must be even more of a vision when the flowers are in bloom. I wish I could see that. Anyway, we were really lucky because they don't give that many tours and the ones they do give are jam packed, but John knows his way around so they give him permission to give a tour himself just to our school group, so we get a much more intimate interaction with the space. So, about that space.
We were towards the end of the day when we got there. I was tired, my ankle was acting up like a mother, and my attention span was waning. Then we entered the first room of the 12th C. area, the beginning of our tour. "Oh." I said aloud, and whatever thought I was having went away. People immediately started clicking away and John stopped them. "Wait," he said. "There will be time to take pictures, but I ask you to hold off. We are all going to take a vow of silence for the next twenty minutes, as we move through the monastery. I want you all to explore the space. Look around you. Breathe. Take note. Find out how these spaces interact with your senses, how they make you feel. When you are taking a picture of something, you are engaged in the action of photographing the thing, and not engaged with the thing itself. Wait. Be in this space." I like John. Also, please note that I am paraphrasing, and that John was much more eloquent than that.

Guh, you know what? I am not at all finished but I am going to post this thing and edit the rest in/edit typos out later, so that folks can start reading.
This was my sunday.
I love you all.