Perfect. Not perfect.

The joke goes like this.

Woman driver:  Geez, there are so many cars.  Why does there have to be so much traffic?

Four year old daughter from the back seat:  But mommy, we’re traffic.

Here’s the thing.

Uzes (pronounced ou-zez) is beautiful. Though I’d never heard of it before planning this trip, it’s clearly been “found”. You can’t believe how many  ex-pats and tourists inhabit Uzes.

Me:  Ugh, so many tourists.  Why are there so many tourists?

me:  But “mommy”,  we’re tourists.

Here’s the thing.

I post some of my favorite pics (along with their stories), and none of the “bad” ones. In this way, like  FB’ers everywhere, I edit reality.  I’ve FB-edited this vacation, I’d hazard, into a fantasy.  Leaving out shadow.

For instance, there’ve been no pictures of the unsettled dispute between my mouth and stomach.  I think maybe (maybe??) I’m a food addict. (in Buddhism, this type of craving – it can also describe any type of insatiable hunger – is called being a hungry ghost.)  I try to speak up for my stomach (which after all is the more essential part of me), but the mouth and eyes yell louder.  (Bread! Butter! Jam! Camembert! Pastries! Crepes!) Tell stories of years of deprivation, good behavior, tell me this is their big chance. How could I deny them?

Like two squabbling children, only one really is beating up the other.  Where is the responsible adult here?  Literally out to dejeuner (lunch).

Here’s the thing.

Uzes. The shops ARE beautiful. The town IS beautiful, and clean!  The food is the BEST!  Everyone is SO nice. The marche’ (market) IS to die (or live) for. There is nothing not tasteful about this place.  Even the American and English ex-pats or tourists dress tastefully in French stripes,  are well-behaved, and speak fairly good French. One definitely feels lucky to be here.  It’s a Stepford Wife of a town.  Perfect.

Here’s the thing.

Maybe I don’t believe in perfect.   Maybe I don’t trust it.  Maybe perfect makes me anxious.

A few days ago, we sat next to a really nice French couple at a cafe.  Michel and Annie. They live in Grange, a ways outside Uzes.  A cheaper area.  They had come in for Saturday market day.  They said people can’t afford to live here.  That 20 years ago, Uzes was crumbling, but that people (who?) started investing big money.  Now it is a touristic and ex-pat boom town.  There still seem to be French people living here.  Maybe they’re only the wealthy French.  Or maybe they’re like some of us in San Francisco who bought our houses before prices sky-rocketed. While lost yesterday, we accidentally came across a “banlieue” (neighborhood in the outskirts) less than a mile outside town — blocks of big ugly concrete project-style housing. (I didn’t take a picture of that either.)  I’d guess a lot of the work force of Uzes lives there. It’s not on the tourist map.

I love hearing that the Pope was in Washington DC. That he let the tiny girl come to him with a letter from her immigrant dad. That the Pope made a strong speech about climate change.  We don’t have a TV, or hardly any Wifi. News is hard to come by.  I’ve totally lost track of the refugee situation, when I’d thought I’d feel much closer to it being here. (my epi-genetics are definitely “refugee”).  I was brought up in Arizona to feel totally American, but it is only by dint of a few decades, and by the force of my four grandparents courage to take a dangerous journey into the unknown to escape persecution that I have the good fortune I do.  The current immigrants will be the grandparents of many 2nd generation children like me IF they are given the chance. I bow to them as if they were my grandparents.

Here’s the thing.

A few nights ago, I got up from my bed, around 4am, my back in pain. I decided to try sleeping on the couch, a chaise longue sort of thing, semi-sitting up. Not great, but better than the bed.  I fell asleep.  Had a really good dream that I was visiting Tara Brach who was living somewhere in southern France.  We had a really good conversation and especially enjoyed sharing some of the difficulties each of us were encountering in life.  We were obviously gonna be friends.

Here’s the thing.

When we used to ask my 96 year old grandfather how he was, he would smile a rueful little smile and answer in a sweet-old-man-Russian-Yiddish-Brooklyn-voice, “Not poifect”.  I always loved this answer.  Not quite a complaint, still some reality.  Uzes is, well… just about perfect..  Moi? I’m a  little more like my grandfather.

xo,

Gayle

ps. the picture is of my Grandfather Harry Katz, the one who said “not poifect” and Anna (who was named after his deceased wife).  In this photo, Anna is 8, Harry is 96.