May 14 2024
Dear All,
I’m writing this in Paris, on a sunny afternoon with just a few high clouds in the blue sky. This morning I walked through the Port-Royal market and on to the Jardins du Luxembourg, where the trees seemed impossibly green and the grass was speckled with daisies and people sat on green chairs in the sun.
I thought of how markets have existed here since the middle ages, and how beautiful the stalls are, with their heaped fruit and vegetables, their fish laid out in order, their buckets of flowers. It’s such a human way to shop, with a greeting, a request, a thank-you and a “bonne journée” as you go on your way, having received the brown-paper bagged lettuce or cherries or apples that you’ll carry home. Markets have existed all over Europe for centuries – only in the US, it seems, do they seem like pale imitations, if you can find them at all. Of course, I do shop at Franprix and other Paris supermarkets for toilet paper and so on, but it’s in the street market that shopping for food becomes a joy.
I’m here for a couple of weeks before going on to Spain, for the writing retreat at Flores that Kim and I and the Flores residents, Basia and Bertrand, have been planning for months. Eight people have committed to crossing the Atlantic to be with us there, to write, and I’m thrilled to imagine what we will see, do, and discover in the course of our time there. Do one thing every year that you have never done before, I’ve decided: and inhabit one new place, at least. Switch to another language, another way of doing things; see things from a different perspective; take a few risks. Today, May 14, is my birthday – my 82nd trip around the sun, as someone pointed out to me recently. (No need to ‘go into space’ as we are there already!) The following day is my daughter Miranda’s birthday, and she’s coming here to join me, to celebrate. We’ll be visiting markets, I know it, choosing ripe fruit and vegetables, browsing through little fresh cheeses, finding stalls with clothes we’ll probably long to buy. The markets are just where they always were, and to return to them is to rediscover a lost pleasure, an aspect of ourselves as a couple of Taurean foodies, that is never far below the surface.
My next newsletter will be from northern Spain, after our retreat, as I set out to walk some more of the Camino, towards the far west, the city of Santiago de Compostela, city of bells and incense, and to Finisterra, where Spain meets the Atlantic. It seems to matter this year to move in the tracks of former civilizations and ancient customs – to rediscover, perhaps, what we need most now, and how we may attain it, to reach the far shore of Europe where it looks across the ocean to the New World, as it was once called…
Affectionately, Ros