19th July 2010 – A Little Love Song

The next morning I arose early, awoken by Vivien’s now familiar véla cries through my open window. My stomach pleading to be fed, I made my way downstairs, notebook and pen at the ready,

and found Michelle sitting alone on the balcony. Breakfasts tended to be spent in companionable silence. Michelle would sit as though contemplating the sun and the view and all the world had to offer, eating as though she revelled in the taste of every grain in her bowl; it was just like when she put rosewater on her face; she felt it with her entire body. I assembled my breakfast in one of Michelle’s tiny spherical hand-smoothed bowls which sat perfectly in cupped hands: a vegan dream of quinoa flakes, pumpkin seeds, tahini, raisins and soya milk. Michelle looked beautiful in the sun, her eyes closed in enjoyment and delicate fingertips lightly interlaced in her lap. 

Michelle was a tall, thin woman, and a little sunken; her cheekbones were pronounced under gentle wrinkles, and her mousy curls were greying. She had no curves on her, but she made up for it with the voluptuousness of her sculptures. She wore deep reds and yellows and oranges and browns, alive with the mature colours of autumn. Her quiet, soft-spoken calmness didn’t stop her from being good at making conversation and putting people at ease. She had originally trained as a sports teacher but had stopped because it didn’t fit with her ideals. It was all competition-based, whereas Michelle preferred a more holistic approach to sport, believing it to be a matter of personal development and enjoyment. Besides, the headteacher didn’t like her methods of using dance and music within the sports lessons. Since then she had taught dance and yoga before dedicating herself full- time to the farm. 

She met a slightly older man at a yoga retreat. He was called Xavier, and they fell in love. They had three children together. She believed in hugging her children tight, showering them with kisses whenever they met, but in such a way that it never appeared contrived or artificial. Her vitality was derived from a mixture of contact with other people – physical as well as social – and quiet reflection. She admitted to finding life hard  on the farm sometimes; it was too lonely in winter, and she would rather live somewhere a little less remote. But Xavier was happy there, and Michelle believed in finding a midway in any kind of conflict: cooperation without loss of integrity. Her compromise was found in getting away from the farm occasionally. She had also accumulated a group of like-minded friends from across the region who met once a month to give massages, paint, sing and dance and celebrate being female. She was peaceful and wise. I wanted to be like her. 

I set my book on the table for later, and looked out across the sky. Early in the morning, before the sun rose too high, the left-hand side of the balcony was the best for sunbathing, and that was where I sat. Once the heat of the day set in, the tarpaulin suspended above bestowed shade upon us as we dined. In the direction of the rising sun I looked out over the garden, the wooden house lower in the valley that was Xavier’s current project for autumn and spring, the goat farm beside it with bin bags strapped over its haybales and a corrugated tin roof that looked white in the sun. In the foreground of the horizon there were little hills with meadows and thumbnail-sized trees, brightly-coloured, and taller hills stretched behind them, dull with haze. The dark silhouettes of the foothills of the Alps sat behind that, and on clear days like that one, even faint suggestions of the Alps themselves, and Mont Blanc.

Lost in my enjoyment of the tahini against the roof of my mouth, unctuous and grainy, nutty and sweetly bitter, it was Michelle’s turn to observe me. It was she who broke the silence first. Almost as if reading my thoughts from the redcurrant bush she asked if I wanted to write a book. I had never considered it. A book. A whole book? What would I write about? I wasn’t sure I would have enough ideas to fill a book with. But why not? Thousands of others had done it before me, so why not me? And so I told her that perhaps I would, in the future, but that it was just a dream. She smiled: for her, dreams were to be lived.

It seemed like an opportune moment. I wanted to know the secret to her and  Xavier. I wanted to know what made them so calm, so collected, so ‘present` and yet so relaxed. What did she believe? And so she told me. She believed quite simply in love. She had been to India several times and been influenced strongly by the religions there, but by their way of living and accepting rather than by their gods. The couple had come to believe that there was love in everyone and that it should be searched for and harnessed and celebrated and encouraged to blossom. They also believed that the love of an individual should not be restricted; it should be expressed, whether towards a partner, or a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, an animal. And they believed in the importance of extending that same love to oneself and to one’s own living of life, to do whatever one did with passion and to experience every moment. It made sense. They became my role models: that was how I wanted to live my life.

The first task I undertook in my new, loving frame of mind was bee-keeping. We were all offered the opportunity, although Goedele’s apiphobia made the offer seem less than appealing to her. As for Kelsey and I, we were raring to go. Xavier found us two bee-keeping suits from the back of the store room. We didn’t half look ridiculous; we probably would have looked ridiculous even if the suits had fitted us, but they were made for tall men. We were the very picture of deflated astronauts, all in white with big, round, heavy helmets on our heads, material bagging around our wrists, ankles, crotches,

necks, and pretty much everywhere else except the chests. I was given a can of smouldering sticks, and Kelsey a small set of bellows. It was hard to grip properly through the thick material of the too-large white gloves, and I was afraid that I might drop my tin of fire. 

Xavier told us that we were to proceed slowly and quietly. The bees needed to be treated with respect, otherwise they would swarm at us, and then they would be scared away from the hive and would search for another home. Kelsey and I were to approach the hive from the back, and slowly introduce the smoke. This would both calm and confuse the bees, making it possible for Xavier to enter the hive from above, pulling out the sheets of honeycomb to inspect them for honey. I had been hoping for home-cultivated honey to go with my forthcoming breakfasts, but sadly there wasn’t enough to harvest; Xavier would check again in two weeks. Still, all was not lost.  I had had my first experience as an apiculturalist!

Later that day, conversation turned to yurts. There were rumblings in the community that the local government was cracking down on yurt owners, claiming that they were illegal because they didn’t have to pay the French equivalent of council tax. Marie was worried. Her partner did have a house in Lyon, so she thought that she would probably be exempt, but she still cared passionately about the rights of yurt owners and had many friends who could still have suffered as a result of more stringent legislation. I couldn’t imagine living in a yurt, and said so. I asked if it didn’t get too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Michelle smiled, and took us up to Marie’s yurt. She was out, but we went in anyway. The round tent was more spacious inside than I had anticipated. There was a double bed and a wood-burning stove, and Taom’s toys were all over the floor. It was more homely than I had imagined, but it still wasn’t for me. The only running water was in a cabin outside where there was a shower and a toilet. I couldn’t have done it.