Letter from the Vineyard

Outside, heavy fog curls around our train as I speed on the TGV back to Paris, arriving at Paris Est. I have two hours to make my way to Paris Montparnasse to board another TGV to St. Malo, close to the border of Normandy and Brittany and I will stay there for a few days, four or five.  St. Malo has been on a list of places to see since I read, “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr, a best seller from two years ago, when I first worked in the bookstore.  If you have not read this World War II story, I recommend it.  It is one of those great reads, remaining with you long after the covers have been closed for the last time.

In Verdun, I spent two days at the Verdun War Memorial and at the Ossuary, the resting place of the bones of 100,000 men, who died in that battle, gathered together in one huge Art Deco building designed in the 1930’s.

It was not my intention to spend two days there.  And it was meant to be.  The first, and only day, I was going to be in Verdun, I spent so much time at the War Memorial I could not get to the Ossuary.  Regretfully, I left the next morning, only to discover I had left something very valuable behind.

So, I returned to retrieve it and took the time to go to the Ossuary, for which I am forever grateful.

The War Memorial lays out the life of horrors the men of Verdun, on both sides, endured.  It demonstrated how they attempted to maintain humanity in inhuman conditions.  They were known as “men of mud” because that is what they lived in, unremitting mud, day in and day out, for months on end, a battle that went on for more than 300 days.  300,000 soldiers, on both sides, died; another 700,000 were wounded, in a battle that decided nothing.  Officially France won the day, and, at the end of the day, it did nothing to move the fate of the war one way or another.  It destroyed Verdun, obliterated Fleury, left widows and sweethearts with dead lovers, mothers and fathers without children, children without fathers.

One letter read something like this: Mother, how could you let me be born into a world that might let me die like this?

It was found on his body later in the day that he had written those words.

Every week, Charles Grauss carved a toy for his daughter, Ghislaine.  They are part of a beautiful collection at the museum.  He did not live to return to see Ghislaine appreciate his gifts; he never saw his daughter after he left for Verdun.

The Ossuary is a silent temple to the dead, silence that seems to pulsate.  To step outside and look across the fields where the armies fought, and hundreds of thousands died, is to, today, to see one of the most beautiful vistas on the planet, a valley, green and verdant, marked with rows upon rows of white crosses, stretching from one side to the other, marking the graves of men who could be identified.  Trees and grass have returned to a land some thought would be forever war destroyed.

The long upper hall of the Ossuary is bathed in a red orange glow from panes of colored glass; the light evokes both the blood shed on the fields below and the hope of heaven that must have been in the minds of men as they clawed through the mud of earth.

Catholics from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and the United States all collected money to build a chapel on the second level.  Above the altar is a statue of Christ after being lifted down from the cross, agony ended by death.  It seemed a fitting statue for this somber place where agony often ended only in death.

After the Ossuary was open, both Germans and French stood in front of it in 1936, vowing to never let this happen again.

In 1984, the French President Mitterrand and the German Chancellor Kohl came together there.  Mitterrand had been captured by the Germans at Verdun in WWII.  Kohl’s father had fought in the hills during WWI.

They held hands a long time, a gesture of solidarity of what both sides had lost at Verdun, the best of a generation, a world that would never be the same, the seeds of an Allied victory having sowed the field that would become the next war.

Two men, at the beginning of the European experiment, acknowledging the hard road from Verdun in 1916 to that moment in 1984, hands clasped fiercely, the European experiment just beginning.

Yesterday morning, I had a feeling of triumph – I successfully validated my Eurail Pass and made a seat reservation on the 10:40 TGV to Metz, where I transferred to a local train and made my way to Verdun, site of one of World War I’s greatest/worst battles.

The process was a little nerve wracking and I made it through with the help of Google Translate, my incredibly terrible French and the kindness of people who saw I was a baffled and, since I WAS trying, helped me manage with their far less terrible English.

By chance, I watched a man insert his ticket into a machine near where I was sitting and realized my ticket needed to be validated before I boarded, so I inserted mine also.  It says on the top, “BILLET a composter avant l’acces au train.” Loosely translated: Ticket composted [stamped?] before getting on the train.

The decision to go to Verdun was by chance.  One toss of the coin went to south, another to east; I looked at a map of France and to the southeast was Verdun, a recommendation of my friend David Arcara, who thought I would find it moving.

We left Paris, a Gallic fifteen minutes late, and raced through green farm fields.  As on farms in America, clusters of trees mark the placement of houses; little villages slide by in a moment as we travel at 312 kilometers per hour.  In a little over an hour, we arrived at Metz.

Last night, I had a delightful dinner with Pierre Alain Varreon, a friend of my friend Mary Ann Zimmer, at his favorite spot, Chez Paul, a vibrant place that winds through rooms and floors.  A set of repurposed subway doors from the 19^th century, separates two of the rooms.  He drank red wine; I drank white.  We talked for hours and then I returned to the hotel, curled in bed, slept, woke early to face the gauntlet of validation.

It has been forty years since I have spent this much time in Europe.  Each moment reminds me to be watchful, in order to figure things out.  It is a foreign country – they do things differently here, large and small nuances.

Yesterday, I walked from my hotel to the Eiffel Tower.  Reaching it, I discovered it in now enclosed in double walls of bullet proof glass at the ground level, black bereted soldiers holding machine guns are all around.  One has to pass through security to go to the Tower.  Finding a bench facing the entrance, I remember a night, almost forty years ago to the day, when I and a half dozen plus Americans, stood beneath the Eiffel Tower at two in the morning and sang our tipsy version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to the amusement and disdain of a few lightly armed gendarmes.  That world is gone; it, too, is a foreign country.  They do things differently there as well, in the past.

Pierre Alain, who is a lifetime Parisian with long stints abroad, is thinking of moving to Portugal, where, I am told, all kinds of expats are finding their way.  Jim, who drove a bus during the summer on the Vineyard on my route, told me he is going to winter in Granada, Spain.

On now the second train of the day, a commuter from Metz to Verdun, I sailed past French towns.  Leaving the toilette, I held a door for an elderly lady and she was on the train with me.  She attempted to ask me a question and all I could do was indicate my French, c’est horrible!  She smiled and understood.

Bridges and underpasses were splashed with graffiti art, much as in the States.  In Paris, it seemed every available surface had been painted.  My amateur evaluation:  New York has better graffiti.

After breakfast, I returned to my room and, feeling just a tad sleepy, lay down on my bed and took a nap.  Waking, I determined to go to the Atelier des Lumieres, where there was a program around Klimt, the painter of “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” or, as it more famously known, “The Woman in Gold.”  It was the subject of a film of that name with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds a few years ago, about Maria Altmann’s quest for repatriation of the painting.

This was not a viewing of the painting, which is in New York, at the Neue Galerie, where I saw it a year or so ago.  This was a light show to evoke all that went into Klimt’s paintings.  It began with images of Vienna before the Great War, when it was capital to empire, mixed with film footage of the ghosts of that time.

It was the kind of program, that were I a college student, I would wish to see in a slightly altered state.

Leaving, I wandered through parks and stumbled on the Church of St. Matthew, my patron saint, lighting a candle to be shown where I might do the most good in the time I am given.

Leaving there, I wandered through several parks, filled with children and parents, basking in the warm sun of the day, playing on phantasmagorical play devices, including a great spider web of ropes.  In one park, there was a high proportion of fathers caring for children.  They were watchful while on their cellphones.

Seeing that there was a subway which would take me back to my hotel, I figured it out and took the 9 back to La Muette, my stop, and came back to my hotel to change and go meet Chuck and Lois, who prepared a delightful white fish with a magnificent dill sauce, accompanied by a Puligny Montrachet, one of my favorite white wines.  We phoned our friend Larry and, then, before I overstayed my welcome, I slipped into an Uber and returned to the hotel.

In front of me is a narrow Parisian street; I am looking out at it through the windows of the restaurant attached to the Hotel Aero, where I am staying.  The attractive lady with the red scarf is having morning tea, with a little white dog comfortably settled out of sight at her side.

After taxiing in from Charles De Gaulle, I checked into my little hotel in the 16^th on Place de Passy.  As I handed over my American passport, the gentleman behind the desk probed to see if I was a Trump supporter.  When I assured him I was not, he let loose with his not very high opinion of our American president.

Last night, I went over to the little Parisian apartment of my friends Chuck and Lois, which they are in the process of selling, as they, too, are thinking about what the next phase of their lives will be, how it will take shape.

We sat having cocktails avant le diner, when they shared with me they had come over on the Queen Mary 2.  Informing them I was sailing back on her, Lois asked, “When?”  As I said November 4^th, she squealed, and Chuck guffawed.  Turns out they are on that on that crossing, too, and we will all be together.  It felt like a very 1930’s kind of moment.

We dined at one of their favorites, around the corner from them, Le Clocher du Village, a small sweet café where they are known and appreciated.  Lovely steak frites!

Chuck and Lois shared that their experience of Paris since Trump’s election.  The French love Americans but have only vitriol in their hearts for him.  And for most other politicians, including Macron.

Back to my hotel, off to sweet sleep and it was, waking to a sunny Parisian day, warm but not hot, life passing in front of me as I sit here, sipping my second café au lait.

Lois, Chuck and I have discussed going to the Musee de Orsay today.  I’ll check in when I finish this.  If not with them, perhaps on my own.  A day to be explored, enjoyed.

As I stare at the screen in front of me, I am 5 hours, 26 minutes out of Paris, having left New York two hours late due to storms raging through the region.  I am sipping a not bad white wine, ensconced in premium class on Norwegian Air, an upstart airline recently come to America after doing business as an intra-Europe air shuttle.

It’s not bad, not luxe but not bad.  The beef for dinner was quite good; the blanket provided is one of the best I’ve had on any flight, anywhere, in any class.  If there were another scrunch of room in my two bags, I would be tempted to depart the plane with it but there is not a scrunch of room in my two bags.

Most of my things are vacuum packed so that I could fit a wardrobe for five weeks in two bags, including my tuxedo and dress shoes for the crossing on the Queen Mary 2.

My great friend Larry Divney has named me “the vagabond” and so I am going to call these missives the Vagabond Letters, reports from the road as I traverse Europe, trying to decide what it is that I will be when I grow up.

And how exciting it is that I am still working out what it is that I will be when I grow up.  I’ve done many things, each one could have been the place I stopped and none of them have been.

The summer was glorious, a simple book seller in the magical kingdom of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, though it didn’t feel simple.  It did feel good.

Watching the map in front of me, it seems that in a half an hour or so, we will have passed beyond North America and will be out over the Atlantic at 36,000 feet, headed straight into Charles De Gaulle in Paris.  The last time I was at CDG, I was walking next to Bo Derek and her husband/manager John Derek, now long, long gone.

It was a blurry moment, one of those times when it seemed every other day was another country, another set of people to meet with.  On that trip, not only did I see Bo Derek, I arrived in Paris while there was a strike on.  Who was striking and for what, I don’t know.  To get to my meeting I had to walk up 7 flights, through the strikers who were, at 9:30 in the morning, eating croissants and sipping champagne – a very civilized kind of strike, I must say.

This is five weeks when I have no real agenda except to wander where I will, when I will.  During the bookstore summer I read Nina George’s “The Little French Bistro,” which was one of the great life affirming books I have read. It is why I would like to visit Brittany, where the book is set.

A row or two in front of me, a man is asleep.  He snores for the ages.  Earlier, I thought he somehow had managed to get on the loudspeaker system, but it was just him.

It is the middle of the night, I am sleepy and will go to sleep. When I wake, we should be coasting into Paris.

When I have done all my other letters, I have done my best to be measured, thoughtful, concise, perhaps insightful.  These are going to be more free form, a stream of consciousness, notes from the road.  It is 2:35 AM in New York and 8:35 AM in Paris.

Good night from over the western Atlantic, 36,000 feet.

It is a grey and sober day in Bloomington, MN, where I am today, visiting kith and kin before departing next week for Europe – a journey for which I know few details.  I arrive in Paris on the 3^rd of October, depart Southampton on the 4^th of November aboard the Queen Mary 2, arriving in New York on the 11^th.  For my arrival, I have reserved a room at a hotel in Paris in the 16^th, not too far, I hope, from friends who live part of the year in the City of Light.

On this grey and sober day, Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford are presenting their different interpretations of an encounter between them in high school.

Last night, I was gifted with attending a performance of HAMILTON by my friend Christine Olson.  Trouble over sexual encounters happened then, too; political careers lost and born on the public reaction to sexual events.

On my weekly call with my friends, Medora and Meryl, I mused on the sense of life sadness that has settled upon me on returning from the Vineyard.  A neighbor in Claverack has succumbed to brain cancer, another friend is being treated for it, another friend has had to take in her grandson to raise because heroin has destroyed his family. Another son of hers could not take custody of his children when their mother was arrested for heroin possession [with her children in the car] because he could not pass a drug test, so they were sent to foster care. The brother of the husband of the couple who cleaned my home was shot to death by police in the parking lot of the restaurant where he worked, allegedly intoxicated and aggressive to a woman, ignoring the police.  A native of Ecuador, I wonder if he understood what the police were asking him to do.

So, I, too, am sober and grey like this Minnesota day, feeling life and death delicately flutter near me, grief near, coupled with the strength of people who go on, their spouses passing, struggling to live, with grace, dignity and humor, even while battling disease and adversity, taking on responsibility not really theirs but for which no one else will.

One night I stayed up with a friend who is enduring and together we howled to the moon, celebrating that at this moment, if only for this moment, we were alive and could howl at the moon, as if we were young men in a younger time that might seem simpler in retrospect than it was in reality, surrounded by nature’s beauty, curated by my friend’s vision.

I am off tonight to dinner with a friend from high school, with a couple of other friends whom we have known for decades, toasting our survival.  As Carlotta sings in “Follies,” “I’m still here…”

Here’s to all of us still here and a toast to all of us who aren’t still here but who were and who are, I hope, singing to us from the stars.

Evening is about to slip down upon us, a couple of minutes earlier than last night.  The twilight is misty with fog rolling in from South Beach toward my little cottage, scattered with bins, boxes and suitcases as I gather myself up to leave for the season.

Four bins are going to Joyce and Jeffrey’s garage against the possibility I will return next “season,” a thing I am considering seriously as I had serious fun in the bookstore this year especially since I told one employee she did not have my permission to be disrespectful to me.  She has been good; there have been times when she is about to say something and thinks better of it.

Last night, I had a long and good farewell dinner with Vlad, the young man from Romania who has taught me so much this summer.  We feasted at The Atlantic, drank cocktails and talked of life and things.  My parting gift was a passport case in hopes for many good long journeys in his life.

One of his gifts to me was he enjoyed my sense of humor.  Au revoir, Vlad!  Au revoir!

And the day that is ending is the 17^th anniversary of 9/11; Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” has been released, his damning exegesis of the Trump Administration.  I doubt there was any coincidence to the timing.

Today, as I was driving while erranding, I could not listen to the memorial reporting as I feared I start sobbing.

That day is alive inside of me and will be until I die.  In past ‘letters” I have written about my feelings.  Nothing has changed; it is alive and painful and inspiring and terrifying now as much as then, a little softer around the edges, perhaps, but not too much so if I could not listen to the reportage.

There is a part of my that will forever stand on the morning of September 12^th, with Spring Street in Soho looking like the last shot of the film “On the Beach;” not the television remake but the one in the 1950’s with Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire – a street empty of life, with sheets of paper whipping with the wind, somewhere, anywhere with the smell of burnt plastic and death all around me.

That morning is the strongest mental snapshot I have of the tragedy – a street empty of human beings, paper drifting in the wind like sagebrush across a Dakota highway.

The bookstore sells a child’s series called “I survived…”    …the Hindenburg Disaster, the siege of Warsaw, the Johnstown Flood, the Battle of Gettysburg.  It would appear there is no disaster they have left behind.

There were a group of parents who wouldn’t let their children buy the “I Survived 9/11” because I think it was too hard for them.  Every one of them, I would bet, were in the city that day and they don’t want their children to be scarred as they are.

None of those kids were alive but the parents were and are still wrestling with what happened.  As am I, obviously.

Just under three thousand died that day.

More than three times that number of first responders are struggling with cancers resulting from being there.  The number who succumb to those cancers rises every day.

A few days after 9/11 I went to my doctor because I was having trouble breathing and he gave me an inhaler, having ordered extras for people like me as soon as the Towers tumbled.  Occasionally, I wonder did I breathe in something that is now a time bomb ticking in my body?  Should some kind of study be done of everyone living within the stream of toxins released, particularly Manhattan and New Jersey?

Today NASA released pictures taken from the International Space Station that day.  You can look at them here.

Seventeen years ago, a bright and glorious Tuesday, I was prepping for a conference call, working to get things finished before I left for ten days in Greece and the world changed forever.

My head bows in memory.  A soft prayer rises.

My time on the Vineyard is finishing, finding me at the end of “the season,” feeling surprisingly nostalgic for my “Best Most Exotic Marigold Hotel” guest house while facing the departure of the people who have intersected my life “this season;” some already gone while others I will leave behind when I depart in eleven days.

Let’s see:

There is Alexander, a high school senior who is now off for his freshman year at Duke, a human who seems capable of unbridled delight at life, off into pre-med.  When he was hired I told Joyce that every older woman would want him to be her grandson.  I was not far off.  Extraordinarily knowledgeable about books for an eighteen-year-old, he was a charm to be around.

Sam, short for Samantha, is off to the University of Michigan for her Masters in Choral and Musical Theater.  It would not surprise me that we would see her on Broadway one day.

Janet, high school teacher turned cleric, has accepted her first “call.”

Tea, the Serbian, here for her third summer, will remain after I leave and then go back to grad school in her hometown, not far from Belgrade.

Courtney, is off to finish college, and will face life full on.  She is one of “the Mettlers,” a family of long island history; her father and grandfather members of the most exclusive club on the island, unavailable to certain billionaires who lust to be included.

Hayley begins her senior year of high school, a quiet individual with huge depth, making her final decisions as to where she will spend her collegiate years.

Young Layla is back in California already, a sprite with a whole life in front of her; her parents are friends of Joyce and Jeffrey and this was her first job.  So young and so old at the same time…

Colin is the expert mixologist at BTB, a talent in the mixology world that will rise and probably be considered one of the great bartenders somewhere, someday.  He is, as you can see, intense about mixology.

There is Nadia, who rose to the occasion when the chef hired for the season flamed out.

And we have Misha, the barista who oversees the coffee, an island legend after three years of consistently producing the island’s best coffee, famous for having been stateless for a while when the Soviet Union broke up and his USSR passport no longer meant anything to anyone.

The list goes on and can’t end without my mentioning Vlad, the Romanian young man who works at the bookstore and at The Paper Store down the block.  There is something between us that makes me smile.  He is protective of me.  We bring each other food and water for shifts.  After I was in the ER when I threw out my back, he did his best to make sure I didn’t lift the tables and chairs that go on the porch.

Monday, he showed up when he wasn’t working to make sure I didn’t do it.

Truth is, I am old enough to be his grandfather and yet, how sweet it is, we are friends.  He is not planning on returning next year; this is his fourth year and he thinks it’s enough.  He’s probably right.

What I have learned from Vlad, or re-learned, perhaps, is that friendships can bridge generations; caring knows no age. When I leave, I will miss him.  He has been the unexpected human joy of this summer.  It is likely I will never see him again and before I leave, I want to share with him how much he has meant to me.

Thank you all!

Insects buzz

through a green world;

seems eternal,

sitting here this

early evening.

Time is slipping;

soon

all this magic

will be gone.

It is Thursday early evening; my day in the bookstore is finished and I am at BTB, the restaurant behind the bookstore, [hence, BTB] and am sipping a tall, summery drink, a bespoke composition by Colin, master mixologist, listening to “island” music.  Steadily busy all day, the bookstore also hosted David Cleveland, who sat on the porch and signed copies of his newest novel, “Time’s Betrayal,” a book that concurs Tolstoy in length and breadth.

Wednesday was arguably the hottest day on the Vineyard so far; it scorched up to 90 degrees and that’s not usual for the Vineyard though the humidity was in check.

It was my sort of normal kind of Vineyard Wednesday – I didn’t work though I had thought that might be a possibility.  Waking early, I read the news for a good while, rolling my eyes more than once.

Some time was spent cleaning “The Best Most Exotic Marigold Hotel” of guest houses and then I settled into the most “white wine” of problems, planning my upcoming trip to Europe.  Not knowing exactly what I wanted to do, I ended up booking a flight to Copenhagen and then I will meander my way across Europe, floating on my whims.  To get to Berlin from Copenhagen, one must change trains in Hamburg.  Never been there, though I think that may have been where my paternal great-grandparents sailed from to come to America.  A night or two there?

Or not to Hamburg or Berlin.  Somewhere else?  A shot across Europe to Portugal, the most talked about European country this year?

My exit point is November 4^th, when I will board the Queen Mary 2, having booked a balcony stateroom and will spend seven days sailing west to America – not unlike my great-grandparents, though I am sure their trip took longer.

All the rest is up in the air.

Today, I found that my long-time friends, Chuck and Lois, will be in Paris when I am in Europe, so I will stop there to see them and re-visit Paris.  Once before I left for Europe with no plans and ended up for weeks in Paris in one of the great passionate episodes of my life.  Ah, sweet youth…

Having just finished reading Nina George’s “The Little French Bistro,” I am planning on winding my way through Brittany, then a ferry crossing to Cornwall, time wandering there, a drink with a good acquaintance, and then across to London to see an old friend not seen in a decade, then to Southampton, the crossing, and home in time for my birthday.

Not that I really have a home anymore; home is where I am.  My “stuff” is in Baltimore and I am now, truly, a vagabond with Baltimore as my base with my friends, Lionel and Pierre.

After looking at European train schedules, I had my weekly conversation with my friends Medora and Meryl.  For gosh knows how many years, at least eighteen and probably more, we talk once a week, sharing our lives, our hopes, our frustrations and giving each other advice and support.  It is one of the most amazing gifts of my life and I’m not even quite sure how we started this but it’s here and we plan for it and miss it when it doesn’t happen because one of us is traveling.

Salute to you two! We had a marvelous conversation Wednesday morning which helped me feel I was engaged in life and that’s what always happens when we talk.

After speaking with them and a little more cleaning, I headed into town to watch “Crazy Rich Asians.”  Having read the book, I loved the movie and, terrible romantic I am, I cried at the end.

One wants love to succeed.

Twilight is falling here on the Vineyard; the sun is slipping into the west earlier every evening and I am going to curl up with a good book and read. I’ve joked that I am a monk this summer and the bookstore is my monastery.  In a way, it’s true and I think I like it.