Last Weekend in Agen

Hello everyone. Hope this blog finds you all well and doing some fun things.

Lisa and I went to Albi, France this past Sunday, which is over two hours south of where we are in Agen to see the museum of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrac (known to the French). He’s well known around the world as Toulouse Lautrac. He was famous in his time and was born in the same hometown of Michel Nadai. Albi was a charming and beautiful town/village and I enjoyed it immensely and would love to go back sometime with Tom. Toulouse Lautrec is very well known for his love of “women of the night” and spent most of his time with prostitutes and especially at the famous Moulin Rouge. A lot of his art is capturing these women in various scenes. He is also well known for his scenes of horses and was injured as a boy on a horse and the growth centers in his legs were damaged, so the rest of his body developed normally, but his legs didn’t. He was called a midget, but wasn’t and from the pictures I saw in the museum, wasn’t too much shorter than average height for that period of time. He was the first silk screen printer and the museum was so touching to see his paintings with what I’m learning. Lisa was generous enough, as this is her favorite artist, to take me around and show me different techniques and how he used the colors to bring such harmony to his paintings.

I was especially touched by one piece of art he had sketched in pencil. He captured this woman partially undressed in front of the mirror as she was washing her face with her top down. Even though from the side and back of her you could see she was overweight and her breasts, being large, hung below her, in the mirror, was an image of a thin woman with perfectly shaped breasts. Lisa and I mused over this piece and I found it especially touching and told her I wonder if this is how he saw all his women. He saw the beauty in them, his art certainly depicts this, his appreciation for women’s bodies and he was not prejudice about size or age. I told Lisa how our culture teaches women to do the opposite and we have got to see ourselves as beautiful in the mirrors, instead of critiquing every inch of our bodies. He saw perfection in the mirror and so should we. (My loose translation and how this personally touched me at least). We all are perfection in the flesh.

Had a funny experience as we walked our way back to the train station and Lisa went across the street to put some postcards into the post (mail) and I waited on the street corner. This lady and two men passed by and I looked the female in the face and smiled at her and she instantly smiled back and I was in shock. As I stood there thinking on how unbelievable it was that someone smiled instantly back at me, she passed me and finally turned and walked back to me and asked me in French where I was from? I spoke back in French and told her from Carolean de Sud (how they pronounce South Carolina) and she laughed and said “where?” I said, “Oh my gosh, you are American” and grabbed her. She and I hugged and she laughed and told the story about how when she passed me and I smiled at her and she told the two men, “that woman is not French, she smiled at me first and also, she’s not wearing black”. LOL. We all found out where each one respectively was from and the three of them are in the development and building of Boeing airplanes and are located in Toulouse for months at a time helping the French. We all laughed at how I was standing there wondering why this woman smiled so quickly and laughed about how we are constantly trying to get the French to smile at us, as it’s our natural instincts and some of them will smile, but only after you hold it for awhile. The woman invited us to stay with her in Toulouse, as she was tickled to find other Americans here and we told her we were leaving and couldn’t get back her way. What a joy to meet someone else from America and have a few moments of fun with them.

We had a full week of finishing up the mural and then starting on the seascape. It is amazing to paint the waves of the ocean and the water. I love it and found it very relaxing just because the scene is so peaceful itself. I’m so thrilled about all the things I’ve learned and found myself today, while walking around Agen thinking, “T, you are a real artist now, you are growing up.” LOL.

I spent today for five hours walking all over Agen, going to my favorite places, spending my last weekend here reflecting and rejoicing. It was absolutely beautiful outside and the joy of having a full day to me and just going where I wanted to and when was awesome. I missed Lisa though, as she’s gone for the weekend and missed being a tour guide for either Lisa or Osamu or both. I’ve been a tour guide; imagine that, for Agen since I arrived back in January LOL. Too funny.

Today, I walked the three miles or so to visit Le Nostradamus. It’s a restaurant where Nostradamus lived while here in Agen. I made the trek so Lisa and I could try to get a reservation for this coming Tuesday evening. (Her payback for me visiting the museum with her LOL). Once I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find the restaurant was open and went inside to have a cappuccino and talk with them. I asked if anyone spoke English and was tickled to find out the owner was who they sent over and she and I had a great conversation about Nostradamus. I told her what I had read on the internet about him living there and she said he had only lived there within a six year period of time. The information about him marrying a woman from Agen and having two children was correct. That this home she now has her restaurant in, was his actual home and was a part of his wife’s family. It was a farm and some of the people who have visited the restaurant since she and her husband purchased it five and a half years ago, tell her stories about their families coming to the farm and getting milk. They claim it was the best around. They purchased it from another couple who had run the restaurant for ten years previously. There is a picture of him hanging just inside the door.

It was stone and mortar, exactly like the home Serge and Mary Rose live in and I found it so charming. All the interior walls were stone and were not as thick, were about 18” thick, where theirs is at least two feet. The ceiling is wooden and some of it was tongue and groove boards with pillars. It was emotional for me thinking of all the history in that place and if I could just get the walls to tell me about all the history, I would be so thrilled. There was a fireplace and I am so excited to come back this coming week and I’ll take pictures then. So sorry I didn’t have my camera with me this weekend, I left it at the studio after we took a picture of the beach scene. I do, however, have more pictures posted.

I’ll be writing one more blog when I get to Paris next weekend. This journey is almost over and I’m so thrilled I made it through it all. It’s been a revealing and beautiful journey, although painful at times, that added to the beauty of it all. What I have learned about me personally and life cannot be captured in a small blog, it would take a book to unload all the information, but I’ve tried to share the main things with you all.

Some interesting things I’ve found out while here in France is that there are so many American influences in France and so many French things in America. They are proud of the fact that the Statue of Liberty was donated to America and Lisa and I both laughed when we were asked if we actually knew that this past week. OF COURSE, we knew that LOL. There are a lot of French words in our cuisine. The words menu, crème brulee, even though much sweeter and not as good LOL, trompe l’oeil, and so many others I thought of today and cannot think of now, are inherited. I’m wondering why we didn’t make them different and why certain words were adopted as was from the French. Made me smile to think of how much we really, all share with each other.

I’ve learned that everyone has the same basic need. We truly are all connected and are so much alike, when you break down all the cultural differences that keep us apart and separate us by unwarranted prejudices. That I will, no matter what others may try to tell me, hold hands with anyone who will allow me. I’ve found quite a few who do and are willing here. It’s been a gift. I’m determined in life to find those who can sit around the campfire with me and sing KUM BAH YAH together LOL.

My friend Christine and I had dinner again this past week and all the things I’m saying above is evidence of how much we are so much alike. She’s the shoe woman I found in the elevator at Appart Valley LOL. We have developed a friendship and enjoy each other’s company so much. We have seen each other or had dinner every time she’s come into town since we finally connected in the store that Saturday. She is absolutely precious and has found the love of her life over the Christmas holidays. I could not be happier for her. She’s been single for over 20 years.

I relayed the story about how Tom and I met and that the very first dinner date we had, he took me to a French restaurant in our area and the very first time he told me he loved me, was in French and he waited over two more months to tell me in English. She laughed as she thought of me being in France at this point in my life. She’s also invited Tom and me to come back for a visit and spend some time with her and her new love.

Life is good and I’m almost finished. I’m rejoicing, like I said above in the accomplishment of it all and can say that it tested me in everyway imaginable. I’m so grateful for everything I’ve tasted, felt, experienced, learned, seen and touched. I will not go back to America the same. The French have seen to that. Today I found myself with a baguette of bread hanging out of a bag to bring back to Appart Valley to go with the spaghetti I was cooking for dinner. How’s that for a French influence?? I will sorely miss their bread, it’s awesome!