Sizzling Beach 1: Yes, We Cannes!

I'm surrounded by postcard scenes of women without tops (young *and* old), men with movie star good looks in crisp white shirts strolling along La Croisette, ritzy shops and hotels that intimidate by name alone... What the postcards don't tell you about is the heat in summer. It is dry and the sun feels like pinpricks on your skin, but your covered parts feel like they're burning; but in the shade, especially when there is even just this tiny breeze from the Alps or the Mediterranean Sea, the trail of sweat on your back turns into tiny icicles so that whatever you're wearing -- it's wrong.

We slept at a camping lodge, trying to zone out the nattering of two German girls (one of whom looked like Michelle Williams) who attracted the attention of two Dutch boys and en ensemble their flirting made the night almost impossible to sleep through. H and I struggled to get up at 9am, made coffee and had store-bought croissants (sacrilege!), Speculoos (redemption!) and Petit Lu Thé. Breakfast picnic dream in the Riviera, check!

At around ten thirty we arrived at the port and left the car in the underground parking which felt like Doha all over again (I'm guessing it was 42°C in there, while outside it was a relatively more forgiving 34°). A stage was being set up at the exit of the parking lot fronting the beach for a nighttime electronic dance party in the sand, but just around the corner of the building was the reason why Cannes is so important to movie buffs like me:

The red carpet of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes is one of the most photographed spots in all of France. Filmmakers and actors (and the occasional celebrity with dubious credentials) pose for the paparazzi on these steps each spring for the Cannes Film Festival. I was in college when a youngish Quentin Tarantino became an overnight sensation here with his Palme d'Or win, becoming a default hero to my generation of Comm-Arts students.

The city itself is not the most charming that France has to offer. The chunky buildings that look like 70s or 80s expansion projects look so outdated now. In a place where appearances count, their most famous landmark (the Palais des Festivals) ain't so pretty either.

Even with the yachts, the trendy restaurants (La Palme D'Or, Palm Square) and beachfront hotels (the Carlton, Hotel Martinez), this town would have been any other town on the Riviera if not for the film festival.

There seems to be no soul to discover here, just Prada bags. No culture, just cocaine. In fact it is the profanity of excess that makes this the city version of a pretty starlet getting too much plastic surgery. It just feels a little artificial. The glamor feels forced.

And it seems like such a sad affair if the only thing a place has to offer by way of culture are its designer boutiques, casinos and beaches.

Or maybe it's exactly because the word "Cannes" is so synonymous with celluloid dreams that everything comes across as unreal, like styrofoam props and painted landscapes.

A little after twelve, H and I got back in the car for the former Greek port, Antibes.

Related Posts: A Year in France Celebration
                       Sizzling Beach 2: Antibes and St. Paul de Vence

A Year In France Celebration (the aftermath)

It's been two weeks since we took off for the slightly nearby, somewhat on the beaten path, but still infinitely great UNKNOWN. On the anniversary of the very day I set foot in France for the wedding we took off again, borrowing my mother in law's car (lent with grave anxiety, which would later prove to be quite justified), and burning rubber through the Cote D'Azur to reach the north of Italy. But let me take you back first to why we had to do this in the first place...

H and I did not intend to do a road trip initially; we were just going to Milan to get the clothes my mom asked my cousin to bring me, him being able to go back and forth from Manila to Milan every few months because his job is just full of perks like that. Anyway, last January my cousin was supposed to come to Paris but couldn't because of a passport snafu that did not turn out to be a snafu but in the end was fucked up badly by the Philippine Embassy there. But no one's pointing any fingers here. This opened up the possibility of us going to Italy... but H didn't want to go to Milan, he would rather go to Rome or some other Italian city, but if we went to Rome we would need a week to get the most out of it... which is impossible since we are both jobless and we can't just throw money away.

We were at an impasse for months. Until one day, while watching a TV investigation on camping, he brought up the idea of driving to Italy and staying at camping lodges which are half the price of cheap hotels, allowing us to see more of France and Italy, and leaves us free from the hassles of air travel in a post-9/11 world. I gamely said yes, not having camped in my life, but having always been attracted to the idea ever since I saw Ninja Kids.

Destiny had smiled on us when we thought up this little plan. It was the birthday of my father in law and he needed his sons to repair the roof tiles in their ancient home (it was the house of the town abbot in the 15th century or something) so we had a free ride to the south with my brother in law. It was unfortunate though, that we couldn't leave a little earlier because I had a friend who was getting married in Nimes the day of our early morning arrival.

The day before the big road trip, H's mom and I sat on the lounge chairs next to the pool. Watching her sons acting like buffoons in the water, she asked me to remind H every so often: "Ce n'est pas ta voiture, c'est la voiture de ta mere," or something to that effect. She knows how he can be a fool on the highway.

The following day, we made it to Cannes a half hour short of the normal travel time because my pleas for rational driving were left unheeded. The only thing that can make a speed freak slow down is a well-placed speed flash... which sadly we didn't see a lot of. What we did see was the colorful spread of summer blooms, fields of sunflowers and corn, apple orchards and orange groves, vineyards and castles.

Even with the GPS we got a bit lost because H was trying to look for a particular road that he had known when the mountainside was dry and black, the victim of a headline-grabbing forest fire in the mid-80's. Today, a younger forest has reclaimed the patches unmarred by human habitation. To him, this high point overlooking Cannes was the street of childhood summers and winters, where he and his pre-pubescent friends (still rocking the peach fuzz) would try to seduce young tourist girls who came to France possibly looking for romance. Sadly, they were too young and neurotic to wield the powers of seduction.

He showed me his family's former vacation home with allegedly the best view of the beach, but trashed so many times by German and English tenants that H's parents vowed never to rent out property ever again (the other reason why we can't keep the Paris flat). Then, like a tourist, he made me pose in front of the garage door... THE GARAGE DOOR! (H, to me: "It's for the parents!!!")

After taking enough photos, we went shopping for food supplies, rushed to find a camping spot and had a little swim before dinner. Dinner was fresh pesto tagliatelle and sausages, accompanied by a bottle of wine to toast to our decision to do this crazy thing, to fall in love, to drop the jobs that had consumed us (can you imagine, I hardly took vacations and worked even when I was sick? I was mad!), and say yes to a life that at the time was still undefined... to be quite honest, it is still in the process of being defined. We know we are together, we know we are staying together... but the rest is still unknown.

When we went to bed, H showed me the note he scribbled on his old sleeping bag in a feverish frenzy almost a lifetime ago. It was a promise to retire the old thing after that cold night he spent alone in the woods in Switzerland, when the insulation had failed to protect him and he realized it was time to let go. It was written in 2003, the 2nd of August -- Exactly eight years ago to the day.

I'm not going to make like it was a profound message from the universe, that would be too easy (or corny), but still it makes me think of the things that we think we don't need anymore, the tacky mementos of youth, the friends we've outgrown, the skins we inhabit at certain junctures in life and cast off when our philosophies change -- These things, they have a way of popping up. Their revelations could be embarrassing, regretful, funny, profound or ambrosial, but mainly they remind us that the things we thought were behind us are with us all along. Countries, cities, family, friends, the occasional sworn enemy - these things never leave us. They're just waiting for a chance to pop back into our lives. And in eight years, who knows what souvenir would remind me of oaths broken or kept?

About the car, that story's going to pop up later; and maybe tell you a bit about the trip too.

Related Posts: Sizzling Beach 1: Yes, We Cannes!
                        Sizzling Beach 2: Antibes and St. Paul

A Year In France

Exactly a year ago today, at the crack of dawn, my brother drove me and my overweight luggage to the airport. I kissed my mom goodbye and my brother gave me a bone-cracking hug; I would meet them in Paris two weeks after, but the way they carried on it was like I wouldn't see them again.

H welcomed me at Charles de Gaulle with a bunch of flowers and a video camera trained on my face. After a day to recuperate from my long flight with a stopover in hellishly hot Doha, we were off to the southern coast of France for a week of sailing. Just a few days before I had been lazing about at the office, staring at the whitewashed ceiling, relishing thoughts of freedom. Then BOOM there I was, on a Tuesday, staring up at a cloudless night sky, counting shooting stars and being rocked to sleep by the soothing ebb of the tides.

A lot has happened year after. I left my family, my friends and my career for a gamble at love. It was a romantic dream, not fully mine (I was a big proponent of staying in Manila), but I have embraced the logic of moving to Paris just the same. Far from being the idyllic life many imagine, it has been challenging and often frustrating, humbling but humorous, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I had a big learning curve to overcome and nothing in my life had prepared me for France. What could be more exasperating than a dinner table full of laughing people and not having a clue as to what was so funny? And by the time you figure it out and formulated what to say, the conversation has flitted to something more entertaining. There were no classes for miming at college, but after a year here, I think I've mastered the art.

It was hard to transition from my Manileña mindset to a Parisienne's. For a few months I kept forgetting that I can't go to shops on a Sunday, I can't pick up a bite at midnight, I can't go to museums on a Monday, I can cross the street without fearing for my life, not all dogs are out to get me, and breakfast is not complete without pain (bread)... little details that I still forget sometimes.

Well now, in calendar time at least, I have come full circle. Today, to mark my anniversary in France, we are taking a road trip. My mother in law has generously (without coercion of any manner --- that I know of) lent us her car for a week so we can roll along Provence on our way to see my cousin in Milan (who tried to bring me my winter clothes from Manila last year but failed miserably), a long-protracted and overdue plan in the making. I've only seen Provence in winter and I'd love to see lavender fields in bloom. Ooooh! I can't wait!

Adventure! Adventure! Adventure!

Keep the Fête

Saturday.

It was midnight and the road to the Lot was still long. I leaned back on the passenger seat and looked up at the pinpricks of white light in the inky firmament - the only thing that kept still as we dashed from one city limit to another.

As we hurtled past Azerables, H wondered what JM was doing. Probably taking his socks off and wondering where we were at the the same moment, or putting away the food his wife made, after rashly expecting we would be around for dinner. He had become so used to us stopping over on our way to the south; but it would be hours before we could rest, and dinner would later come in the form of convenience store sandwiches at a gasoline station (surprisingly) full of Filipinos, who turned out to be (not surprisingly) on their way to Lourdes.

With us was my brother in law, L, who owns the car but couldn't drive because he worked until ten in the evening. An hour's worth of doo-wop medleys kept me awake, challenging me to sing each and every song. At 3 am, H pointed to the deep blue sky outside that terminated in a dull glow of street lights watching over the rest of creation while it slept. It was so different from the orange-blue sky we'd been accustomed to in Paris, which is mainly condensed water vapor, pollution, sweat, lies, disappointment and regrets all rising up from an old and very tired city.

The next couple of hours were a blur. By luck, I was able to reach our bed and sleep for a few hours until lunchtime surreptitiously crept and we had to go say bonjour and salut to the rest of the family. After the repast, the brothers disappeared to get their father his birthday gift (I got the card to go with it, so my part was done) and I went to the clearing behind the woods next to the stream to read, and failing that, fell asleep on the grass.

It was the sound of my father in law's lawnmower that roused me back. I waved to him and went back into the house to wash the flowers from my hair and came downstairs to the clinking of champagne glasses. We sang happy birthday to him and had Swiss-style raclette from the wheel of cheese they got from Switzerland just the day before (which I realized was a far better technique than French raclette, and truer to the real sense of the word, which means "scraping"). Dinner was a blur, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol I put away, with a wee gulp of digestif at the end to soothe my gluttonous belly.

I had yet to recover from dinner when the brothers and some kids from the village drove to the next town for its yearly fête. These little hamlets each have their own summer festival, perhaps a tradition passed down from medieval times, when troubadours hopped from town to town spreading melodious gossip and troupes of actors were the superstars of the day. In fact, I could imagine how the scene before me would have appeared in an earlier time, with simpler music and with people garbed in vintage guises. These modern trappings couldn't hide that they are essentially the same souls, concerned about life, love, money, family... we have not evolved much, you see. And the teenagers who did most of the showing off were no different from the teens who showed up at these festivals centuries ago, whose main goal for the night was to get someone in the sack.

A be-mulleted band played renditions of French and English tunes onstage while the rest of us drowned ourselves in beer, iced tea, sodas and Perrier. It was at 2 am, when the DJ got the party started, that we also drowned ourselves in soap suds care of the foam machine.

Meanwhile, in a river in Washington, the cremated remains of Kurt Cobain coagulated into a semblance of the human form just so it could turn over after sensing a rhythmic pounding in the ground reverberating from across the Atlantic where, in a small French village, his "Smells like teen spirit" was publicly being slaughtered by the nimble fingers of a local DJ named Felix.

It was almost morning when we got back home. The clear outline of the Milky way was close to disappearing. H's brothers croaked on the sofa at the pool house, and my legs were dead from my vain attempt to dance.

And then, just like that, it was Sunday.