Woke a bit before 6 am this morning. Drank coffee outside on the porch and read an essay in Harper’s by Lydia Davis. She’s an author I’ve encountered many times in journals and magazines, and I’m pretty sure I have a story collection or two of hers somewhere? At any rate she’s writing about observation and the compulsion to write about her observations. She’s got a singular style and voice in her fiction and non-fiction, and does a lot of translation from the French–in fact I’m sure I read an essay by her about French translation at some point. I’m distracted while reading and observing our two cats who are climbing on me one minute, then chasing lizards the next. Lydia Davis is observing cows in her essay, and while I’m reading I hear a horrible guttural stegasaurus groan which I can assume is one of our goats even though it’s a new sound. The male has climbed along a narrow ledge atop a wall which has a metal chain-link fence built into it, at the top of which is a kiwi vine. While standing stretched out full length on his hind hooves to nibble kiwi leaves his hooves slipped off the wall. I rush over to find him being strangled by the kiwi vines with his horns stuck in the fence. I free his horns as he re-positions his hooves on the wall and immediately he is contentedly munching kiwi leaves again as if nothing happened.
At about 8 am guests who’ve rented one of our gite appartements–The Studio–check out. They are two cyclists off to their next destination after a one-night stay in Treignac. I pause my reading to strip down the bed and turnover the apartment for the next guests. Just as I finish hanging the clean sheets and towels from the washer our next guests arrive. They’ve rented The Loft gite for a daytime sleep-over as they are driveing some horrid 24-hour route. They check in at 8:05 and are planning to leave at 5pm. I wonder if they are actually going to sleep or if they are going to fuck. It’s our first overday stay as opposed to overnight stay. And, to complictate things we have a check-in in the same apartment 45 minutes after they are planning to leave. Things will be tight. We are used to it, however, as business has been brisk this year since January.
After checking in the new guests I hear the guttural scream again, and the male goat is once more dangling in the air with his throat tangled in kiwi vines. I free him once more.
I sit again and finish the Lydia Davis piece and then polish off the rest of the magazine. I realize I rarely write about day-to-day stuff anymore the way I used to on a previous and much more successful blog. Has my Muse deserted me? Have I lost interest? On the desk in my office is a pile of language books I put out back in February–I was adamant that I was going to do a daily study/writing routine and that immediately fell apart. Perhaps I’ll get it back together in the fall after tourist season quiets down.
These past two months have been a bit exhausting. We’ve hosted an open mic night with a full band, a harp concert, several workshops and a dance performance, as well as the usual run of weekly classes and ateliers. All of this on top of the two rental apartments ramping up into tourist season, the crush of garden maintenance, a quick five-day vacation in Spain AND working at the local street food festival, electrical and plumbing challenges, renovations, etc, etc.
We’ve also adopted a French bulldog, two baby goats, and four songbirds. I’ve put in at least 50 hours on fencing alone over the past three months–building the goat enclosure, then expanding it, adapting it as needed, and repairing it several times as the goats found weaknesses and pushed through.
And with all this work going on I’ve allowed some major milestones to pass unacknowledged here.
The Milestones
As of June 2024 it has been 6 years since we moved out of the USA. We left behind an elaborate social calendar, a Victorian rowhome filled with art and objects, political and business connections, the best next-door neighbors ever, our pet dove Godzilla (RIP), and a city with which we were infinitely familiar, where we’d carefully developed an intricate network of deep involvements over the years. And, of course we left behind beloved family members and dear friends.
But, I regret nothing. All of the challenges and myriad difficulties of being voluntary immigrants were worth the sacrifices. I was looking for a new push, a new means of developing skills and becoming a stronger and better version of myself, and moving abroad definitely pushed all my faculties to the brink on multiple occasions. I often thought about involuntary immigrants, those who have no choice but to migrate, and considered how my difficulties paled in comparison (while the privileges granted by my paleness greased many wheels for us). Our experiences in Panama–living in luxurious high-rises by the ocean, pushing ourselves professionally in a completely different environment than the Baltimore City Public School System at a swank international school, making friendships with locals and other expats from around the world, going routinely to beaches on two oceans, going into the mountains, rainforests, cloud forests, jungles, seeing wild animals, getting the most out of our crippled Spanish–we loved it all. Further, there is nothing more liberating (after the trauma subsides) of getting rid of all the stuff Americans accumulate over decades. So many possessions! It was a lot to let go but we learned how to do that.
As of the first half of June 2024 we’ve lived in France for 2 years. Our French expat experience has been much different from the Panamanian, and for beyond the expected reasons of climate, geography, culture, history, language, as well as living in a decolonized nation versus living in a former colonial power. In Panama we had jobs and an employer with lawyers and an HR department who handled the heavy lifting for us. For the move to France we did much of our own heavy lifting, with the help of an excellent hand-holding service based in Paris. And we had no employer, instead we started our own business, which I suppose counts as another milestone (In June 2024 we marked the two year anniversary of not working for The Manand became ‘self-employed‘).
Our humble abode from an island in the Vezere River: Moulin Sage
We are loving the Correze region of France. The village of Treignac has proved to be everything we hoped when we chose it after touring dozens of small medieval towns across France as we researched moving here. Many people in and around Treignac have helped and supported us as we work toward our goal of creating an event space/concert venue/professional development center/arts and crafts atelier/pop-up cafe/retreat center/eco resort/organic farm/anarchist commune/naturalist resort/vinyard/exposition space. Yeah, we live in a run-down apartment in a largely decrepit old factory building, but it’s the best life! People come here for concerts and shit, which amuses me no end (our first concert was a gathering of about 30 people to hear ellen cherry). People we need seem to arise by magic at the exact moment we need them–could we host yoga classes here? A yoga teacher appears. Can we find a contractor willing to use recycled or repurposed materials found in the mill to create new useful spaces? Tom puts a home-made flier in our mailbox. It’s been a blast, and quite exhausting at times. But it’s different working hard for yourselves and your clients and not for somebody else.
We earn about 8% of the income we had when we had jobs. But our stress and anxiety is way down, and we can afford to live a quality life here on a small income.
Our growing menagerie of small mammals: Cornichon, Capri, and Bou-Bou the Frenchie
On May 13th, I turned 55 years old
So being in my mid-fifties is pretty much the same as every other age I’ve been. Differences? My collection of unguents and gels has grown, my toes suddenly look like my grandfather’s toes, and I go to bed before 10pm every day. 85% of the time I feel physically like I’m in my early 30s–in fact, due to Tai Chi I often feel more limber than I did back then. But the other 15% of the time is where mid-fifties life gets interesting: 5% of the time I feel exactly my age, 5% of the time I feel like I’m in my 70s, and the last 5% of the time I’m stiff and sore and feel at least 90 years old. I can do renovation projects and work in the garden cutting and stacking and digging like a maniac no problem, and then get injured standing up from the couch or opening a pickle jar.
The biggest realization over the first half of this decade? Shut the fuck up. Keep your opinions to yourself, listen to what others have to say and shut the fuck up. Don’t participate in or encourage gossip of any kind. Petty annoyances and grievances? Let that shit go. This is the time to work on the inner self and start preparing for the next stages. What books to read, what books to re-read, what places to visit or revisit?–all of these questions become more delicate and nuanced. Typically American dudes live to be 75. Maybe I’ll get there, maybe not–maybe I’ll go beyond? But it’s time to start considering the fact that you’ve got a couple strong decades left, and how to spend them is a key consideration.
As of June 11, 2024, we’ve been married 30 years. How does this happen? In the blink of an eye we’ve been married 30 years. It really seems like our 20th anniversary party was just a few years ago. It’s been a true pleasure seeing my wife bloom since we moved abroad–unfettered by an employer she’s just madly arranging events and ateliers and adding more and more artists and craftspeople and creatives to her roster. But as my Baltimore 8th graders used to say, “she do too much.” Sometimes I get completely wiped out trying to run logistics and preparing for all the gazillion things she’s got going on, and yet she continues adding more and trying more. We have this amazing piece of garden and an old stone building and sometimes I’d like to rest on my laurels and set a spell in a hammock by the river. Patricia tells me “you have to schedule some days off when you’re self-employed or you’ll burn out,” and then she adds two more retreats and another workshop to the calendar and buys some massive thing on FB Marketplace that I have heft downstairs. But it’s all about the love, and there’s nobody I’d rather spend 24/7 with as a business partner and life partner and lover and animal co-parent. She is a dynamo with a world-changing mission and has no interest in slowing down a bit, and I could not be luckier to see it all up close.
Mysterium Coniunctionis 