incidents and accidents

Être là.

Elle me tend le livre - page à gauche en Latin, page à droite en français - à travers la grille qui nous sépare.

Je recommande que toute aspirante commence par cette lecture, dit-elle. C'est notre Règle, sur laquelle est basée notre vie entière. Pour nous connaître, il faut la connaître.

Vous la lisez en Chapître, n'est-ce pas ? je demande. Vous en avez une autre copie ? Je ne veux pas vous priver de votre lecture.

Elle rit un peu. Des Règles, on en a des douzaines, dit-elle. Prenez et lisez. On en parlera demain.

Elle me serre la main - son poignet est maigre et glisse sans problème entre les barres de la grille. Puis elle se lève et je la regarde sortir du parloir, c'est une ombre noire et blanche un instant, puis la porte ferme.

Je me lève lentement, prends le livre et retourne à l'hôtellerie. Je prépare mon déjeuner - du pain avec une tranche de fromage et une tomate, plus de la moutarde de région pour lier les goûts ; des raisins ; un yaourt ; et je fais bouillir de l'eau pour du café soluble.

Je dis une "Benedicite" toute seule et me mets à table avec la Règle de Saint Benoît. Et je lis pendant que je mange - ce ne sont pas des manières correctes, mais je suis seule dans la maison d'acceuil, et je ne cherche pas à impressionner qui que ce soit. Ce que je cherche, c'est de me connaître mieux, à travers l'objectif de cette vie monastique : je me cherche là-dedans. Allez voir là-haut si j'y suis. Y suis-je ?

Après le Prologue avec son "Ecoute" si frappant, je tourne la page pour la description des sortes de moines. Voici des termes que je n'ai jamais vues avant. Cénobites, Anachorètes, Sarabaïtes, Gyrovagues ... comme des noms de groupes punk d'un lycée d'enfants prodigues. "Venez entendre les Gyrovagues ce vendredi soir !" Je souris. En lisant je comprends que je les connais après tout, les Cénobites sont des moines et moniales comme ici, comme le Père Gabriel qui nous a instruit dans le chant Grégorien, comme la Mère Colombe qui m'a reçue au parloir ce matin-même. Les Anachorètes, ou Ermites, d'accord, je pense à Julian of Norwich, cloîtrée dans sa cellule au nord de l'Angleterre ... Les Sarabaïtes, c'est là où ça devient moins plaisant. "C'est une race tout à fait détestable" écrit Saint Benoît - ils font une vie religieuse à leur gré, c'est-à-dire, pas une vie religieuse du tout, une vie humaine sous l'habit du moine. Et puis j'arrète de sourire.

La quatrième sorte de moines est celle des gyrovagues, c'est leur nom. Ils passent toute leur vie à courir d'une région à l'autre. Pendant trois ou quatre jours, ils se font loger dans les maisons des moines, tantôt chez les uns, tantôt chez les autres. Ils sont toujours sur les routes, ils ne restent jamais au même endroit. Ils sont esclaves de leurs désirs et ils ne cherchent qu'à bien manger. En tout, ils sont pires que les sarabaïtes.

*

1992 I leave California.

1993 I have decided to leave grad school and go back to California. I spend the summer with my family and decide, finally, to return to grad school after all, because I would regret quitting.

1994 I drive across country and back again.

1995 I go to France for the first time, come back to Massachusetts, go to California, get married, drive from L.A. to Portland, Oregon, then fly back to Massachusetts.

1996 Every 3 weeks or so I am in the car driving to Virginia Beach because Chris is stationed there for spy school. At the end of the school year I leave Massachusetts, convinced it is for good, drive to Virginia Beach, then we drive across country to Washington.

1997 Chris is stationed in the Mediterranean, so I get on a plane for Europe and go meet him in the south of France. I travel from Paris to Chambéry, to Cannes and Nice, back to Paris, to Milano, to Brindisi, to Corfù, to London, to Bath, to Oxford, back to London and finally to Los Angeles. I call my family from the international terminal at LAX and say "Hey, I'm home. Can someone come pick me up?"

1998 I stay mostly in Washington, mostly hating it.

1999 I go to Paris for a few months of research.

2000 I come back to Washington, then move back to Massachusetts. Chris joins me after a couple months. That year I go to Paris twice, in January, then in March, and in June I fly to London to meet some friends and we fly together to Venice for a week. Back to London, then I go to Lyon for a few days to see what the city might be like. And in October I move there.

2001 I go with my choir to Le Barroux. Later that year I go to Copenhagen, then Madrid.

2002 I go to the hospital.

2003 I am back at Le Barroux, sitting in a beige room with a grill separating me from the gentle-eyed nun at the other side of the table. I am crying, and she reaches through the bars to take my hands. Courage, ma fille, she says, with such tenderness in her voice it makes me cry harder.

2004 I move back to Massachusetts.

*

La vie religieuse de tous ces gens-là est très mauvaise. Mieux vaut se taire que d'en parler !

On se revoit, à travers la grille, et je lui tends le livre. Elle pèse son regard là-dessus quelques instants, sourcils levés en arc. Je baisse les yeux et me sens rougir et je lui dis : Mère, veuillez m'excuser. Je lisais en mangeant et j'ai renversé mon café. Puis j'ai cherché dans votre librairie pour vous acheter un autre exemplaire de ce livre, mais ... ceux que vous avez à vendre ne sont point aussi élégants que celui que vous m'avez prêté. Je suis navrée, vraiment.

Elle rit et me rassure. Les moniales ont un atelier de reliure, elles traitent tout le temps des livres en mauvaise condition - pire que ceci - et elles savent enlever les taches. Mais qu'en avez-vous pensé ?

Je lève les yeux et lui dit : Je suis Gyrovague. Pour moi cette réalisation vient comme un éclair, comme un coup de foudre. Ma vie religieuse a été très mauvaise, il est vrai. Une fois installée à Lyon et dans une communauté j'ai commencé à mieux me stabiliser, peu à peu, mais il faut m'accuser tout de même.

Elle a l'air toute interdite, toute étonnée. Ah bon ! dit-elle. Et quelque chose derrière ses yeux se ferme, plus fort que les barres en fer de la grille qui nous sépare. On lit le mot "barres" et on pense à la prison. Ce jour-là, c'est la mienne : je suis en-dehors.

Je me rends compte d'avoir commis une erreur de temps. J'ai dit : "Je suis" quand ce que j'entends, c'est : "J'ai été." J'ai longtemps été Gyrovague, sans vie religieuse, sans vie intérieure pour de vrai - mais dès maintenant je veux apprendre à être Cénobite. Mais dans ma grammaire inconsciente il reste des traces de Gyrovague, car la voilà qui tombe sur la table entre nous, avec ses valises et ses piercings, ses opinions et sa colère, toujours cette colère qui la fait voyager partout et tout dépenser, en essayant de se trouver ou de se fuir quelque part de nouveau, qu'elle dit faire parce qu'elle a envie de découvrir ou parce que ce voyage lui sera utile pour les recherches, mais ce ne sont que des excuses, elle n'est pas franche avec elle-même, la Gyrovague, elle ne peut pas se permettre de l'être, elle tourne trop en rond, elle est trop prise par les distractions, elle ment à elle-même pour s'échapper des vérités trop pénibles, elle s'éparpille. Je ne peux pas nier qu'elle vit au fond de moi. Pour la première fois je la vois avec honte.

Mère, dis-je à nouveau, j'ai été Gyrovague. J'ai toujours été Gyrovague. C'était pour m'enfuir. Je n'ai plus rien à fuir, à présent.

Elle ferme les yeux une seconde, les rouvre et me fixe d'un regard pénétrant. Après tant de parcours, pouvez-vous rester toute la vie dans un seul endroit ?

Le voeu de stabilité.

Je ne sais pas.

L'ai-je dit à haute voix ? L'ai-je murmuré ? Ou l'ai-je seulement pensé, cette murmure des regrets de mon coeur ? Je ne sais toujours pas.

Laissons donc ces moines de côté ...

Je vois la bonne Mère une fois de plus, cette semaine, puis jamais encore. Je continue à voyager, avec la triste compréhension que ce n'est plus pour me découvrir quelque part. Je sais où réside mon âme, et c'est là-bas, dans ce pays lointain, dans un temps clos. Ce souvenir, ce savoir, est devenu ma propre clôture, et j'y adhère. Dans le temps j'ai fait des voyages en essayant de devenir quelqu'un d'autre à chaque fois. Maintenant, le voyage, ce n'est que géographie. Le fond est stable et me suit. Ainsi les frontières ne compte plus pour rien ...

Et deux ans plus tard me voilà devant une décision. J'ai pris un stylo pour écrire : "Chère Mère ..."

A Series of Unfortunate E-vents

Hello there. Remember me? I know, it's only been a few days since the last post, but that wasn't really my writing, you understand (the speech is from Shakespeare, Henry V), and this week has been such a whirlwind that I just haven't had time to compose my own rousing speech to encourage you as you head off into battle. I do like the line about "Be he ne'er so vile," I have to say. That's what solidarity is all about.

So last night I sat down at my keyboard and started to write something new. And then I had to look something up for the post, so I could go that extra mile and give you a link to the image I was writing about. (Because I am all about going the extra mile, especially when it means I don't have to leave my comfy chair. I'm here for you that way.) Well, looking something up meant opening a second browser window. That's cool. Except it was actually the third browser window, since once Gmail is open, Gmail stays open.

(A propos, I'm not exactly sure why Gmail stays open. It's not that I receive urgent and fascinating emails by the dozens. Mostly I receive urgent and fascinating spam. I guess I keep Gmail open so I can delete all spam more frequently. But I'm pretty convinced that the more frequently I delete it, the more spam I get. Any thoughts on this?)

So I had three browser windows open, and about six long paragraphs of post written, and then I had to look something else up. Uh-oh, you're probably thinking, because you are smart and wily to the vagaries of these here internets. That's a lot of browser windows ! Information overload ! That's what the little worried voice in the back of my mind said, too, but Pish-tosh, I scoffed at the worried little voice, and clicked decisively on "New window." I started a little search and found a page with a title in Cyrillic that contained the information I wanted. I clicked on it, then flicked back over to my post page as it loaded.

At the same time, I received a Gmail notification that Sam Robbins had written to say that wearing a bra causes breast cancer, especially if you sleep in it. WOMEN BE WARNED.

The combination of Sam, the new window, and the mere idea of Cyrillic made my browser freeze. I had to hit that fateful key-combination, Control + Alt + Delete and choose "End Task," knowing it would close not just the Cyrillic page but also Gmail, the image I was working from, and ... all seven paragraphs of my post. I couldn't remember the last time I'd saved it. Sure enough, it turned out to be at least three paragraphs earlier, and the links I had opened these new windows to find - for you, my friends, for you - were gone with the touch of a button. Growling, I reopened the page where I'd been working on my post, wrote a brief synopsis so I could re-write it later, and finished with an * and the words "damn you firefox damn you." I went to bed annoyed, had a horrible dream, and woke up late.

The moral of this story : Don't let the Internets set on your anger.
Or : Don't go to bed mad.
Or, alternately : Use Explorer.
Also : Don't sleep in your bra.

This story shall the good man teach his son.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

one nice image, from the PBS poster of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Henry V.

another nice image, from here.

Three blog.

Three screen names I've had : romaryka, choeurdelyon, cricket

Three things I like about myself : The way I feel when I sing. I love cooking for people. My eyes.

Three things I don't like about myself : My physique goes (literally) pear-shaped if I miss a month of running. I procrastinate until things get desperate. I am too complicated.

Three parts of my heritage : Italian, UK English, and Basque/Catalan, which I just learned two months ago.

Three things that scare me : Spiders, spiders, and spiders.

Three of your everyday essentials : Music, the Rosary, and Coffee.

Three things you are wearing right now : The silver bracelet engraved with my name on one side that a dear boyfriend gave me when I came back from a summer trip in 1989, and which is now adorned with saint medals and an opal cross. I only take it off to swim or run. The gold Médaille Miraculeuse my choir gave me as a baptism present, which is engraved with my name and Catholic birthday (16-04-2001). The antique garnet earrings I bought in London a few years ago.

Three of my favorite songs : “Nothing” from A Chorus Line. “Going Through The Motions” from the Buffy musical episode Once More With Feeling (yeah, yeah – bite me). “Just You Wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins” from My Fair Lady.

Things I want in a relationship : Prayer, trust and humor.

Two truths and a lie : I tripped over an electrical cord and exposed my undergarments during my first week of teaching. While traveling randomly through the Mediterranean one summer, I accepted a ride in Greece from perfect strangers who then explained, in broken English with a weird Scottish lilt to it, that the bus schedule should be taken as a “document of suggestions” and that the pay phones at the harbor were usually used by “hookahs” trying to set up their contacts. I once got ordained as a minister for the Church of Bob by sending in a cardboard thing cut from a box top (yeah, I can do your wedding).

Three things I can't do without : Water, music, and God.

Three places you want to go on vacation : France, Israël, Italy.

Three things you just can't do : Pee standing up. Breakdance. Think of the perfect comeback right away (takes a few hours, if not days).

Three kids’ names : James, Gabriel, Michel.

Things you want to do before you die : The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, visit the Holy Land, learn to play the clarinette and/or cello.

Three celeb crushes : Johnny Depp, Kyle Secor, and Brent Spiner. And Michael J. Fox. Who is totally NOT the anti-Elvis. And Tom Wopat. Because Luke was so much cuter, and nicer, and better all around, than Beau.

Three people you want to know these things about : you, and you, and you. If you feel like answering.

Octobre 2000.

It wasn't so much that the doorbell rang at 3 a.m.
Or that there were three people on the darkened third floor landing.
Two boys.
Or that they pushed past me as I stood blinking at the sound of their voices.
Or that they praised my cat and décor, hats pinned to the yellow walls, and smiled at my sky-blue moon pyjamas.
Or that sleep had lifted from me like a sunroof, pushing back to let in the black-bright sky.
Or that I wasn't nervous at their dark-eyed long-legged presence in my home at 3 a.m.
Or that they sat down uninvited around my kitchen table and one of them turned lazily to me to ask, Vous avez du feu ?

It was that, at three in the morning when the doorbell rang, and sleep leapt from my bed, and three people stood on the darkened third-floor landing, and pushed past me when I answered and stood blinking at the sound of their voices, and came into my home and praised my cat and décor, hats pinned to the yellow walls, and smiled at my sky-blue moon pyjamas, and sat down uninvited around my table and said Vous avez du feu ?,

I did.

Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine ...

The man at the church entry folds white paper and slips it between folded green paper, over and over again, and slips the two sheets into makeshift missals. I am in line for the confessional, and thumbing through my 800 to find today's Mass - and suddenly I am confused, for my page marker is on the 21e dimanche après la Pentecôte, yet the weekly bulletin (the green paper) clearly reads "22nd Sunday After Pentecost." I was here last Sunday. How did I miss this Mass? Did I miss this Mass? Did some Feast supplant it? My eyes skim the 21e dimanche for anything, note or neume, I recognize. The Introït looks vaguely familiar, but I can't be sure. There's the Offertory with its liquescent "perdiditque" and the Communion, first mode, with its deceptive major thirds. The Mass Propers, including the Vesperal antienne, center around the story of Job ; suddenly I remember standing here a week ago, having left the house in a rush and clutching at the first Missal that came to hand - a 1954 Latin-French Dom Lefèvre with sumptuous pen-and-ink drawings and pages of explanation for the different liturgical seasons and feasts. Ah. Another memory returns - the choir singing badly. Ah. That's why I don't remember the Mass : I was in the choir.

I have just the time to think about how precisely wrong that thought is, as I turn the page to "22e dimanche après la Pentecôte," the Mass "Si iniquitates." I am sightreading the stunning Offertory, "Recordare mei" with its amazing repercussions on "conspectu," when I notice that the man folding and slipping green and white paper has stopped folding and slipping. In fact, he hasn't folded or slipped in over a minute, which suddenly seems a very long time indeed.

I raise my eyes.

Is that your own Liber ? he asks, in not enough of an undertone to be respectful of the people around us, who are praying and, like me, preparing for Confession. There is an unsubtle emphasis on "own."

Mm-hmmm.

Annoyed by his question and what I hear as his insinuation, I do not elaborate. Do not tell him that I bought it in the summer of 2001, for 30 francs, from a priest in Lyon who had recovered about two dozen such Libers from a nearby convent that had to empty out its chapel crypt. I bought three others like it, and over the years gave them to choir members in Lyon who didn't have their own Gregorian missals to learn the chant Propers and the Kyriale. I do not tell the man, yes, it's mine, I took it with me on retreat to le Barroux, I used it to direct a choir, some pages have pencil markings for expression or the starting note, see, this very Alleluia I had to transpose down a step and a half for the women's schola, we started on a Ré dièse. Here, marking the page for the Kyriale XI - which technically the Schola should sing today as we're in Temps ordinaire - is the handwritten sermon from my last Sunday at Saint Georges, and in the announcements? See? the priest thanks me, and says goodbye. (His writing has run, a bit, where I've wept over the paper.) Here, page 279, is the laminated holy card of the Miraculous Medal, which young American George sent me when I was in the hospital. (George whose sister had attempted suicide, two years earlier. George who left Lyon to become a monk, in a monastery run by the Society of Saint Pius X. And who my priests mourned.) It marks the Antiennes à la Sainte Vierge, mobile according to season, moving between Salve Regina and Alma Redemptoris Mater mostly, since Ave Regina caelorum and Regina caeli are shorter and easier to remember, easier to find. A narrow strip of blue mottled card stock marks the Salve Regina au ton solennel. Here, at the end of the Ordinaire de la Messe, is a postcard with a photo of the sculpted hands of the Saint Curé d'Ars. Whose prayer I can still hear, from the Musée du Saint Curé, the rooms full of wax figures, the voice-over intoning as he approached death : Ô mon Dieu, je vous aime. A sticker of the Sacré Coeur de la Vendée marks the Fête de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ Roi, the last Sunday in October. The book is full of landmarks, souvenirs collected from my various journeys with God. Do all my objects have such history? What am I doing here, far from a life that lets me plumb its riches daily? What is the logic of having left that journey and its legacy an entire ocean away? My throat tightens and I lower my eyes quickly to the page. This book could be the most valuable thing I own.

The man goes back to folding green and white paper, and slipping the pages into a booklet to follow the Mass. Remorse for my defensive reaction, thank God unspoken, seeps through me, its cadences an antiphon. On the first page of today's Mass, I notice the opening words of the Introït - Si iniquitates observavéris, Domine, Domine, quis sustinébit? (If you, O Lord, laid bare our faults, who could withstand the scrutiny?) - as the Schola upstairs, the men who sing the chant in this church, begins to rehearse.

I stop the choir suddenly, to rehearse the difficult beginning. Rain dashes itself Romantically against the old single-paned windows of the priests' house where we rehearse : the first chill day of the autumn. Si i-, two separate syllables, the vowel so tricky to make distinctly audible, both times. See. Glottal stop. Ee. And quickly, because this is only the beginning. I tell the choir : this tiny detail is the beginning of our faults laid bare. The little stop we have to put there, to articulate both words, makes us stumble. We have to get through "Si i-" to reach the piercing arch of "iniquitates," our faults thrown high, too visible, too garish ; and then the suddenly soaring podatus of "Domine," the Lord, right there in the notes themselves, reaching higher than our sins. Beyond us. And yet - Quia apud te propitiatio est, Deus Israel. Despite our faults, despite our climbing that falls so short of where we should be, where God wants us, He is forgiving, He is all forgiveness. The question in the first half of the Introït a panicked cry : the second half, a reassurance, the neumes descending gently. And then the Psalmodie : De profundis clamavi ... I call from the depths to Thee, O Lord, hear my prayer. It is the structure of the piece itself, the story of the world. All we ask is answered. All we sing, our need, is calmed.

I realize this man must find it strange, if not suspicious, in this church whose arches reflect only the low sonorous echoes of men's voices chanting, to see a woman with a chant-book. A woman who occasionally wears trousers and sweaters to Mass, unlike the long pleated skirts and buttoned blouses of her peers ; who does not cover her hair. Who holds a chant book he doesn't quite recognize, the page headings in French. I see me as I imagine he must see me, a curiosity : the irritation at being questioned slips from my heart, like paper. I watch his busy hands, his arched and lowered eyebrows, his gentle smile and pointed question. The way he greets the parishioners who arrive to collect the weekly bulletin and announcements, the leaflet Missals : hands outstretched. This is his soul's family, the people for whom he will go to any lengths. I remember. I miss that. A rush of disappointment makes one knee buckle, as I realize I have not rebuilt that part of myself, here. Who am I to begrudge this man his question? How easy it is to judge, to feel judged. Why assume I have the right - why assume he should give me the right - to stand here, the song I can't share held tight against my heart, when I haven't shown him where this book has taken me, before it led me to this church door - his?

He turns halfway around again, nods at my Liber, my clutching hands around its black cloth binding. It looks well-used, he says.

Yes, I murmur, and Loved. We exchange a quiet smile ; I advance a step toward the confessional. My faults laid bare. It has been, I tell him, and blink back stinging tears.

Net Disaster Dot Com !

HEH. NetDisaster.com.

(Type in http://romaryka.lunanina.com, or a website of your choice. I liked God Almighty, but Wasps were also cool. Thanks Lauren.)

Also ...

You scored as Ron Weasley. You often feel like second best and as a result don't have an awful lot of self confidence, but a truer more capable friend would be hard to find. Ron Weasley 90% Ginny Weasley 80% Albus Dumbledore 80% Sirius Black 75% Harry Potter 75% Hermione Granger 70% Remus Lupin 65% Severus Snape 65% Draco Malfoy 55% Lord Voldemort 30% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

(I tried to be all Machiavellian and hard-edged on the student questions. Apparently my second-best self shone through. Good?)

Thanks to Zadok for the quizlink ...

the book of benjamin

I know your anger. I spent a few years there, myself.

Wishing I could make the people I knew into who I wanted. Which really meant I wished to make myself another.

And then, by grace, I did. And nobody came with me. And that stung. And I spent a long while wondering just what it was good for, grace, if it meant I had to walk towards it always in the shadow of an aloneness I couldn't turn back from. And couldn't explain. And couldn't share.

And I was angry. I was very, very angry indeed. I tried to turn away - you can't want me, not like this, always shouting - and tried to turn you toward this something I could sense but not define - why can't you just give it a chance, just give me a chance - and it seems I lost you, somewhere on the road from there to here and back again, and now no matter where I look, you aren't, don't want to be.

Except I hear you raging. And I know that while I dreamed of someone who would come with me far enough to let my angel touch his forehead, I forgot to love you as you were. And maybe you've been dreaming of someone who would wake up, as if these years could burn off like a fog, and have forgotten how to love me, how to love. And despite the light I turn in, because I've lost you this is darkness, and I can hear you raging in its tunnels.

You won't believe me when I say I know this place. It's not much to look at, crags and broken earth. When you live here you think its sharpness clarity ; its barrenness, lucid. You think its empty topography speaks of depth of truth. I know, I tell you. I saw its broken hands and thought them expressive. I saw its reaching wound and thought it wisdom.

It is not. It is rage.

Haymarket.

Last Saturday, I got up early and took the T down to Haymarket (no, not this Haymarket). I went armed with 10 dollars and an empty backpack. Neither was enough.

I had been wanting an open market experience, like the marché Saint Antoine where I got all my vegetables in Lyon. The fruit kiosk in the Harvard Square T station is an acceptable substitute, but limited. I planned to bring home enough Mediterranean vegetables - while they are still at least halfway in season - to make ratatouille to last the next two weeks.

One stall advertised 5 red peppers for a dollar. I also discovered a long purple root I didn't recognize. "What is this?" I asked the vendor, feeling my eyebrows furrow suspiciously. "Eggplant," he said. Okay. Eggplant. Ratatouille takes eggplant. I had never seen eggplant that looked like sunburned rhubarb, is the thing, but I was not going to let that stand in my way. "Three for dollar," he told me. "You want seven for two?" No, the first three would suffice for my experimental rhubarb-ratatouille.

I found ten heads of garlic for a dollar, two pounds of Roma tomatoes for a dollar, three pounds of vine-ripened tomatoes for two dollars, two bags of yellow onions for a dollar, two pounds of zucchini for a dollar. Buying the zucchini I was reminded of my first British friend Emma who made regular forays to the Marché Saint Antoine at 12h45, just before closing when the vendors lower their prices. She would stagger home under the weight of four kilos of courgettes and two kilos of aubergines, three kilos of tomatoes. And, of course a nice wedge of Brie de Meaux. (It's hard to know how to ask them for the right kind, she told me once. I mean, you have to buy it fermier or it doesn't taste right, but you can't say to the cheese man, please, give me some that's nice.)

As I started to work my way out I passed a stall where the vendor was trying to get rid of his remaining produce. He had scratched out the original cardboard sign against his crates of yellow peppers. Five for a dollar, the printing now read. Okay. My ratatouille plan expanded before my eyes. I saw stir-fry, pasta arabbiata, stuffed peppers, roasted peppers with goat cheese and pesto ... My mouth started watering right there. "Five, please," I said. "Five yellows !" he shouted, and his assistant bagged them and tied off the plastic before the sound had evaporated from the back of my tongue. "You want avocadoes too ?" he asked. I shook my head. "No, thanks." He looked at my quizically. "Why ?" I opened my mouth to respond, then realized I didn't have a good answer. After all, who doesn't want avocadoes ? So I closed my mouth and shrugged and nodded instead, and that's why I came home limping from the weight of vegetables and trawling the Internet for avocado recipes.

My hands were already sore and the plastic carrier bags were running deep creases into the skin of my arms. I had four dollars left and stopped to buy a piece of fresh halibut, thinking of Françoise's poisson pané ; I held myself back from adding shrimp and Bay Scallops to the fish-bag. I handed the fish vendor my four crumpled bills and turned to leave. At the stall just by the exit I saw a table with a random assortment of produce : cilantro, yellow squash and ginger, 99 cents per pound. I dug into my change pocket for some coins. The vendor saw the broken bulb of ginger I held out toward him and said "That's it ?" That's it, I answered, I don't need a whole pound ; and he said, "Merry Christmas." Then he turned around and shouted, in the direction of the not-yet-dwindling crowd in the market, "Raspberries, two boxes, one buck, raspberries."

Little Door, Little Gate

He looks at me thoughtfully for a long minute before speaking.

You really want to know what I think? he says. I nod. I think you do not yet have the Christian reflex.

I recoil. I go to Mass every day. I read the Breviary. I sing chant on my own. I lead a children's choir. I share my faith - and my choir - with my adult students. No one has ever said this to me before, and it hurts in a place I know will not scab easily. How is my life not full of Christian feeling?

He shrugs lightly, as if the question is, finally, unimportant. C'est comme les fondations d'une maison, he says. Il faut le temps que ça creuse.

*

We finish lunch, then head down the five flights of stairs to the street. I want it to have been October, even though that's chronologically impossible in this true story. But since you weren't there to contradict me now, this narrated chronology is all up to my own memory and imagination, I will tell you, and perhaps you will just believe : it is October. The air outside has that ineffable Octoberness to it - octobericity : crisp blue sky, a promising breeze, light playing in the corners and grinning from the rose-and-ochre building walls. It is too late, or too early, in the season for the sun to bake this stone, and so it soaks inside, and lingers and refracts instead.

The cobbled paving stones are warm beneath our feet : I can feel them through the soles of my clogs. Halfway down the street I stop for a moment and remove my brown jacket, the one with the fuzzy lining - it is too warm. Underneath I am wearing a simple cotton shirt, the kind with buttons and a collar, and beige pseudo-combat trousers, with wide forbidding pockets almost at the knees. Taking off my jacket feels almost rebellious, as if I am breaking the rules at recess. I tilt my head halfway, and catch a faceful of sunlight. Marvelous.

He has stopped, a little way ahead, and stands waiting as I slide out of the jacket sleeves, then fold sleeves and bulky body into an awkward roll I can't quite tuck under an arm. I give a self-deprecating gesture of amused frustration, and run-skip the few steps to catch up with him. I smile as I notice the other people in the street. They stare at us, and I smirk as I see us through their eyes : the short woman with the clunky shoes and baggy mannish trousers, and the willowy man with the Roman collar and a long black skirt. The next woman who eyes us up and down I catch with a return gaze, as peaceful as I can make it, and send her a wide, beatific smile. She lowers her eyes and hurries in the opposite direction.

He's seen my exchange with the passing lady. He shakes his head, then laughs. He is not yet a priest : his ordination is planned for June, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. In the meantime he is spending his Diaconate with us in the parish, in the choir, in our homes when he has a spare afternoon or evening between theology studies, parish finances, and Domus Christiani groups who need an aumônier. This afternoon we have met over lunch to talk about the choir, and made each other laugh with stories both rueful and sincere. He corrects me gently when I say, of one soprano, Elle est odieuse, celle-là, and replies, Oui, mais elle donne beaucoup à la chorale. I nod. We exchange a look. Mais c'est vrai qu'elle est chiante, parfois, he adds in what is nearly a mutter, and I laugh so hard I inhale water and start to cough. Hours pass and I find myself telling him about my graduate work, about things which, for some reason, I haven't shared with the priests I know better. A high-school French class where we read Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger. The teacher who became a dear friend all through college, who just retired last year. I find myself telling him, and remembering as I speak the words, about a night at French Camp, in the mountains above San Bernardino, when this teacher wept on my shoulder. I was sixteen. In turn, he tells me about the day he knew he had a vocation. Sitting in the far corner of the silent Besançon church. He tells me about playing Cowboys and Indians during Mass with his brothers. They chased each other around a pillar in the nave of their church. (On était trois garçons, et Maman n'avait que deux mains - she couldn't grab us all at once.) A brief lull in the flow of conversation makes us both glance at our watches, and gasp simultaneously - Déjà 16h ?? -C'est pas possible, comment ça se fait ? - and then we walk downstairs together and I show him the clever jointing in the staircase, the way the triangular slabs of stone are piled so the weight is evenly distributed but strength accumulates in the thick center column. The staircase is cool and dim, the walls musty and peeling because this building was not slated for renovation ; a faint smell, mildew and garbage, permeates the descent. I point out the way four hundred years of climbers have worn a smooth foot-shape into the lower stairs. 1518, I answer when he asks. The building's panneau - the hanging placard with a coat of arms and date of construction, like the ones hanging over so many doorways in the rue Juiverie - was broken last summer. Now a jagged half-panneau presents a cryptic history : a broken shield, the top half of a crescent moon, the swerving tail of a lion which you know is a lion only from memory. And on the other side, half a measuring stick, half a compass, half a gate. The architect's name is lost. We have to repeat these details so they won't disappear, we who live here. It was built in 1518, I tell him.

*

We decide to walk across the river by the nearest bridge, because from the old city you can see the new one and the doubled, unmirroring spires of the Eglise Saint Nizier. Il y a une mosaïque dans la crypte, he tells me, qui raconte toutes les vies de saints Lyonnais. Our history - for each of us, borrowed.

After the staring woman passes, in the street, we stop when a leaping puppy rushes up wanting affection. My friend the not-yet-priest smiles and extends his hands to the eager licking tongue. C'est le début de la vie, ça ! he exclaims, and he, and I, and the puppy-owner and the puppy, all smile and rejoice in the dancing afternoon light. His face is illuminated with bright new life in these four leaping legs.

The puppy and puppy-walker move down the street away from us. My heart stands still, in that spot, with them.

Out of nowhere a man lurches toward us. His dark denim trousers are too loose and flecked with paint. His face is dirty, his hair at odds with both gravity and the shape of scalp beneath them. 'Zavez pâ du papier ? he asks. He launches into a long explanation - he needs the paper to write down the Digicode of the building he is working on - and my eyes flicker down to his paint-spattered shoes ; the wide beige blobs could be still wet, could be shining. Or it could be a trick of the light. I step automatically backward, and he steps with me, repeating - 'Zavez pâ du papier ? U' morceô ? Fô q'j'note l'code d'num'ro 19 ... Beer crawls from his mouth, the way odors crawl in the cartoons, something to tempt Pluto from his doghouse. His eyes do not quite focus on me. He stands too close ; I shake my head.

My friend the not-yet-priest widens his eyes at me and I stop stepping backward. I am thinking, my friend the not-yet-priest wants me to pay attention to the signs of this man's drunkenness, at 4 p.m. He wants me to be careful. And by "careful," I understand immediately, assertive, intolerant, self-assured. Ecoutez, I say, non, je n'ai pas de papier pour vous. But before I can finish the sentence, he steps forward. J'en ai, du papier, he says, and pulls an old typed page from his pocket. I recognize the printout of l'Evangile du Quotidien, the logo of the daily Internet Gospel reading. He extends his hand toward the paint-flecked workman, who grabs a pen from some filthy pocket of his denims and hurriedly scrawls five digits on the back. Merci, hein, he says, distractedly, and lurches off.

He shoots me a dirty look as he lopes down the narrow street. Or perhaps it is merely confused. I stare after him, then turn slowly to my friend the priest.

It was only paper, says Monsieur l'abbé. Of course, he smelled of drink ... but it was only paper in the end.

I think of the times I have come home through the darkened narrow street late at night, after a choir rehearsal or an event at school, and had to rush to the Digicode at my own door because the requests from the men in the street were for anything but paper. I am thinking of an instinct you develop as a single woman living abroad, the one that tells you everyone unknown is suspect, everyone who eyes you asking for something is asking for too much. The instinct that keeps you away from the rue de la Baleine on a weekend, or Guillotière on a weeknight ; the one that trains you to smell a man's alcohol level at twenty paces. The instinct of fear. It is stronger than hunger, stronger than thirst. You learn to listen to it and you raise a refusing hand when the hungry, the drunk, the needy come close in the dark or just in the shadows of your street, on an otherwise sunlit afternoon.

I meet my friend's eyes and understand something, so sudden and unbidden that I actually pronounce a little "oh." This is what he means. I have to replace the fear instinct with trust. And more than trust : with love so generous it doesn't have the time to pose the question of trust. The fear instinct pushes people away, with as little as a suggested gesture of one hand, the angle of a cheek. The thing he has - the reflex I haven't developed - invites them closer. Not because of them, but because they are in the image of God. The drunk man in the afternoon street-slope, the groups of dark-eyed boys on the rue de la Baleine some Saturday night, the homeless woman with no shoes who stares in a way that makes my skin crawl - these are the faces of God in the world. Hungry, needy, wounded, poor. Outcast. Learning to look at them with love instead of fear is learning to walk in joy and confidence.

I think back to an afternoon when I had to drop something off at the priests' house, and as I rounded the corner into their street I saw a figure on the ground a few feet from their door. The priests' house has not always been a venerated place. By which I mean, specifically, men lean against this wall and pee. They upend tall heavy bottles of dark-brown beer. Kids from the underfunded Lycée Saint-Marc across the street smear sandwich-halves into the stucco, grind cigarettes out against the yellow-beige paint. A figure on the ground near their door could be a very bad sign indeed. It sent my fear-instinct into full five-senses-overdrive alert. But that afternoon, as I drew nearer, I saw that the figure on the ground was my friend the not-yet-priest, sitting on the pee-and-beer-soaked tarmac, back against the cigarette-and-sandwich wall, knees bent peacefully, broken sandals on full view beneath the frayed bottom hem of his black soutane. The wall behind him was covered in filth and he leaned against it unafraid. The ground beneath him was steeped in garbage and he bent his limbs into it, unbothered. The filth, the garbage, didn't touch him, because he did not resist them. And I began to understand : there is nothing to fear. Even if people harm you, you aren't touched. His unself-conscious humility made him all the worthier of respect, and when I came within earshot of him that afternoon, with my armload of Gregorian sheet music, tears pricked the backs of my eyes.

Bonjour, monsieur l'abbé, I remember greeting him that afternoon, blinking hard and smiling shakily, full of wonder at the things the world could teach me once I started listening.

Ah ! Bonjour, he said, and clambered to his feet, absently brushing street-dirt from the back of his soutane. Vous avez la clé, peut-être ? He gave me a little sournois smile. The smile of someone who wants something yet is willing to mock his own need.

Oui, I told him then, je l'ai. I brought the key to the blue door's old fashioned lock, and let him in.

*

I blink at him now, quick movements of the eye for comprehension and emotional disguise. I can't put into words what I've begun to understand. The drunk man has lurched down the street away from us, paper scrunched into his pocket, and the light has started to fade and we are on our way across the Saône to Saint Nizier, and suddenly we look at each other in the fading light above the cobblestones with rose-ochre stucco buildings rising on either side, and I say, Vous vous souvenez du Digicode ? and he says, Mais oui, and when we reach le numéro 19 he types the numbers in the metal pad and there is a muffled electronic beep and we push the heavy door together and go in. We are spelunking and we are grinning, and we enter the neighbor's courtyard and admire the light on the stones, and the angles of architecture, and the worn foot-shape in the lower-level stairs. And then we leave by the same wooden door and offer each other giddy eyes and giggles as we walk through the streets of the old city and talk of faith and buildings, stone and oak and unseasonal sunlight, and chant and friendship, and then we cross the river to Saint Nizier and go down, down, down into a room beneath the ground to witness saints and angels in radiant arrangements of white and colored stone, each piece cut by hand ; and some hands bleeding.

I Want to Spend My Heaven Doing Good On Earth.

About a year ago, I heard a sermon about the catchy acronym "WWJD." What Would Jesus Do? We've all seen these bumper stickers and braided bracelets and shoelaces and t-shirts. The pastor giving the sermon said he found this acronym inaccurate, and wanted to suggest a change : "WWJHMD." The new acronym means What Would Jesus Have Me Do?, which changes the question entirely. The difference, he said, is that when you're on the road in your Lexus and some asshole cuts you off, if you ask WWJHMD you might come up with an answer, but if you ask WWJD you immediately encounter a logical problem - Jesus never drove a Lexus.

(And this, as I see it, is one problem with popular spirituality today. We take the melodies from ancient traditions and try to transpose them awkwardly for our modern keyboards, without paying attention to the integrity of the way their message works without our intervention. It is the integrity, the wholeness, that we should try to hear, because that is the message.)

Today, 1 October, is the feast of Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus et de la Sainte Face, or Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. I've been reading her correspondence with a young seminarian for the past two weeks, and the reading experience has been like getting reacquainted with someone I knew as a child, having an old friend in the room and learning from the path her life has taken in the years since we last saw one another. That strange process of rediscovery which is also discovery as you get glimpses into the radiance of someone's soul, someone who is not quite a stranger. Thérèse offers wisdom, comfort, simplicity - and I have to force myself to close the book and say enough for tonight, because otherwise I will devour it and then it will be all over. I've been putting off reading the last five pages for three nights now. Instead, I go back to various passages in her letters. And am struck, wordstruck and soulstruck, by her eloquence, her insight, her tenderness. Her kindness. And am struck all over again, the way I was when I finally read her autobiography, a book which I'd bought but never ventured into, really, not beyond the first few pages.

Two years ago, when I was waiting for the French government to decide if I could stay in the country a little while longer, I came across The Story of a Soul, in a forgotten, typed English translation on the monastery bookshelf, and I lost myself in it and the Little Saint's way of seeing the world. Reading, then, I realized I was meeting an old friend. Meeting her for the first time, though something about her had always been with me. It took a while for me to open my eyes to it and turn to her and say hello. Since then she has been a constant companion, in my prayers and in my daily remembrances. She is the only saint I tutoie, because she feels so close, like a little sister, and so compassionate. Her littleness is wisdom. Her wisdom is great. I realize as I'm reading these letters that I identify more with Maurice Bellières, the seminarian, than with Thérèse, whose greatness reaches far beyond me. His questions are echoes of mine (or, give that a chronological "vice-versa" and you'll know what I mean). His doubts are familiar. His self-doubt, more than anything, gives me a painfully vivid pang. His feeling of unworthiness in the light of her peace, his frantic insistence that she pray extra hard for him, because he is too weak to do it himself ... Frère Louis, je me reconnais en vous.

And it occurs to me tonight, that if we can't logically ask What Would Jesus Do?, that we can ask What Would Saint Thérèse of Lisieux Do? Because her Little Way deals with situations small on the surface, much farther-reaching if you sit and look at them for a while. Things like being nice to someone who drives you batty, or giving up a small pleasure so that someone else may enjoy a different pleasure more fully. She knew the trials of living with other people in close community. She was no stranger to the daily annoyances and demands and distractions of even the most very affectionate camarades, she was no stranger to having to master her temper or quell her emotions or put on a happy face. She knew spiritual doubt and spiritual darkness. She knew the struggles of humility, and how frequently our faith is tested. And she knew that we have to persevere through everything, and still be nice about it.

Tonight I want to say, bonne fête, petite Soeur, and thank you. You have taught me more than I can say - more than I can write.

Read about Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus here, or here. French page here.

This is possibly my favorite picture of Sainte Thérèse. She wrote a play about Jeanne d'Arc, roughly 30 years before Jeanne d'Arc was canonized. Her sister Céline (also Sister Geneviève), an accomplished photographer, recorded the event.

Lines from TV (or, More Proof I am Watching the Wrong Shows)

Scientist Guy Played by Brent Spiner Who, Despite His White and Distinguished Hair Shall Ever After Remain Ol' Yellow Eyes To Me (SGPBSWDHWDHSAROLETM) : The [spaceship] only has a radius of 3000 metres. It can't go outside that. Basic science.

Scientist Woman Who Is Also Some Kind of Secret Government Agent : In case you haven't noticed, basic science is out the window.

[Romy (sadly, not part of the script) : We are talking about psychic aliens. Psychic. Aliens. How basic can this science realistically be?]

...

SGPBSWDHWDHSAROLETM : We're looking for a guy who can suck on a car battery all day without feeling it.

[Romy's Note : Yeah, Data, that pretty much sums it up. And if he can de-bone fish without grossing me out, does yoga without using words like "center" as verbs, and speaks a couple foreign languages, you have a taker.]

*

Dad : So, how was the first day?

Veronica : Well, I beat up a freshman for his lunch money, then skipped school after lunch.

[a beat]

Dad : What, no after-hours premarital sex?

Veronica : Oh, yeah. But, Dad, I think you're really gonna like these guys.

*

Thanks, TV, for supplying what real life can only dream of in snippets of good dialogue. Or bad. Thanks for being TV.