Oh January...

In Spain we sat in parks and made lists of good decisions and encounters that created such lovely momentum throughout our trip. We rode along on the wave of newness and freedom that traveling always seems to create. Then I returned to La Rochelle and January showed it's slow, gray self. Last Wednesday I visited Jayne and Chloe in Rochefort, their stagnant little town with its mechanical industry and three naval academies. We walked to the Charente and sat on the edge of a big concrete dock, marveling at all the gray: the murky water below our concrete block, the misting sky, the muddy fields of grass and the stone houses.

January always seems to be a sleepy month, and this one follows suit. So it goes. This weekend we did everything we could to shake up our blahs. Erin came on Friday and we ran along Rompsay canal and then went hungry to the Friday evening market, all lit up and jolie. We made curry and watched too much Freaks and Geeks. Dotan, Elise and Jayney came to visit and we drank kir (crème de cassis + white wine). The air warmed up for some reasons and we wandered around the port and the beach. And when the hour came we walked across town to a trippy tribal-electro concert and danced and played and danced some more. Mission accomplished, blahs subdued.

Maybe it's not a good idea to go to an artsy French film hungover and incredibly tired, but I made it work Sunday night. I went to Le Coursive with my friend Clémence and her mom to see Tomboy, a 2011 film by Celine Sciamma. The film patiently follows Lourds, a stick thin young girl, as she explores her gender in a new neighborhood. The story begins with the family's move to some fairytale place in the suburbs of Paris, where packs of kids play in the river and run through tall, green woods. Initially the pace seems too slow, many focused shots of Laure examining her androgynous body, playing with her little sister, laying in her mother's arms. As these scenes steadily build the family's relationships, especially that of Laure and her sister, Laure becomes “Michaël” in the eyes of the neighborhood kids. The film is impressively true to a child's experience of exploration and confusion. The cinematography captures the blues and greens of a lazy summer, a calm setting for a potentially unsettling transformation.  The softness of it all enforces the idea that this transformation, however complicated, comes naturally to Laure. The ending is surprisingly sweet and realistically inconclusive. Check it out.

xoxo