Atchafalaya Houseboat by Gwen Roland

While I wash dishes at my oh-so-non-glamorous job, I often play Vanderbilt University college radio. A few nights ago, they had "Sounds from the Bayou," and by golly I heard a genre that has never entered my ears before: Creole country music. Being from Nashville, I heard a familiar twangy sound emit from the radio, but then I realized the cheatin' and heart-breakin' lyrics weren't in English but in French! {Albeit with the craziest French accent} These "Sounds from the Bayou" in addition to (shamefully admitting this) True Blood episodes reminded me of a book about Louisiana that bewitched me last summer: Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp by Gwen Roland. You might have seen a documentary about this experience on PBS, because that's how I heard about it. The idea for her book was brought about by the reprinting of a photograph below by C.C. Lockwood  in a National Geographic collector’s edition entitled 100 Best Pictures Unpublished in 2003.

This photo brought so much interest from my generation, that PBS made the documentary and Gwen decided wrote a memoir about her experience in 2006. Looking at this photo, you can understand why people wanted to know more. The story behind the photo and her book goes as this (taken from Amazon):

In the early 1970s, Gwen Roland and Calvin Voisin decided to leave civilization and re-create the vanished simple life of their great-grandparents in the heart of Louisiana’s million-acre Atchafalaya River Basin Swamp. Armed with a box of crayons and a book called How to Build Your Home in the Woods, they drew up plans to recycle a slave-built structure into a houseboat. Without power tools or building experience they constructed a floating dwelling complete with a brick fireplace. Towed deep into the sleepy waters of Bloody Bayou, it was their home for eight years. This is the tale of the not-so-simple life they made together—days spent fishing, trading, making wine, growing food, and growing up—told by Gwen with grace, economy, and eloquence.

After reading this book, Gwen was added to my list of heros. She is more "Passport Smiles" material than I'll ever be, as she is such an adventurer. Before her time on the houseboat, she was my age, and much like me in the padded bubble world of academia as a grad-student. What made this book accessible to me is that she wasn't a mother earth woman (those women scare me/ intimidate me). In fact, she knew nothing about organic farming, carpentry, fishing, etc. Despite this inexperience, she decided to leave all her comforts and do something completely unknown:

       "That summer {in the swamps} turned into an education…I became acquainted with my body, which had been ignored for years as just locomotion for my brain. It awakened from sanitary, air-conditioned hibernation to the trickle of sweat down my arms, the green fragrance of crushed cypress needles, and the sensuous luxury of a bath with Ivory soap (because it floats) in the bayou at sunset.

            As my body grew brown and hard, muscles I didn’t know I had ached to tell me of their existence. Food tasted better than it ever had in my life…In school, I had often watched midnight come and go, but now it was difficult to stay awake an hour past sundown."

To summarize, if you didn't wanna read all my scribblies: Gwen Roland is a badass and I wanna visit Louisiana. Also, read her book! It's short and sweet and will make you wanna build your own sweet houseboat.

"And babe, don't you know it's a pity /That the days can't be like the nights..."

"...In the summer, in the city/ In the summer, in the city/

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head"

=

"Summer in the City" by The Lovin' Spoonful

 So it's getting HOT, HOT, HOT in the city, which means, I need to wear more dresses. Here is one of my favorites that I just bought a few weeks ago at Urban Outfitters. Also, yet again, I am introducing my other bag I bought on my last day in France. Again, a Longchamp.

"It's summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking
Hush little baby
Don't you cry"

=

"Summertime" by Sam Cooke

(outfit details: dress-Urban Outfitters, headband: Camaieu, necklace: Topshop; bracelet: vintage).

You know what else has cute dresses, the topic of summer, and good songs? 500 Days of Summer, which I just now watched from Netflix. I really loved the movie. No need to mention how cute Zooey was, because I already knew that but, BUT, we must mention how great Joseph-Gordon Levitt was. Because he rocked it.

 Best part of the movie: his Karaokee of The Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man." I would advise seeing the whole movie just for that. Also, I much related with his character Tom in the movie who "grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one... This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie 'The Graduate.'"

a) I loved and still love old British pop music. 

b) my favorite film since I was 13 is The Graduate, and I have made no-telling-how-many-friends watch it when they came over to my house.

c) this quote about Tom reminds me of quote from High Fidelity:

"People worry about kids playing with guns…we are scared some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives. "

[and finally] d) I feel like I should make a movie just so I can produce such a badass soundtrack as this one had. 

Nice and "Le Petit Prince"

 While in Nice, Anna and I stayed at a hostel (above) called Villa St. Exupery. Before I go any further, I must fawn over the hostel a little bit, because it was a so great, especially because of the friendly and helpful staff. Stay there if you ever go to Nice, France. The hostel is also named after this guy:

who wrote this book below (Le Petit Prince).

Coincidentally, I had just finished reading this book for the first time before I arrived. For about six years now, people have been recommending Le Petit Prince, but I always blew it off, thinking it as book for little ones. To the contrary, it was, in fact, intended for adults, but it pleases both big people and small people. The book was so profound that I think I have to read it a few more times to really let the ideas sink in.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

"Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, 'What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?' Instead, they demand: 'How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?' Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him."

In the French version, St. Exupery calls grown-ups "les grandes personnes." Here are ways that I did not act like une grand personne on my trip to Nice and Monaco.

"I'll fly away oh Lord, I'll fly away"

After living in France for 7 months without a trip back to the US, I booked my ticket home for May 4th and it got me to thinkin' that I should blog about my love of airports.

Many people will disagree with me on this sentiment, especially those recently forced to lodge in terminals due to the Icelandic volcanic ash, but I have always had a love of going to the airport because of the excitement, the butterflies I get in my tummy. I usually can't sleep the night before because I am so excited and packing my bags.

Of course, I do have my horrific experiences at the airport: Cut to the scene where I missed my flight from Paris to Munich and shamelessy balled my eyes out for everyone to see and woke up my parents at 5am central time venting my griefs.

 ...And I don't exactly enjoy being on the plane: the smells, the claustrophobia, the weird people sitting next to you.

...but I love everything leading up to getting on the plane.

 When I am at the airport, I feel so, well, cool? Forgive me for using such an anti-climactic, silly term, but the fact that I am even putting words to this confession is embarrassing.Walking through the airport,  I have so much excitement and imagine that other people are thinking, "Ooohhh, where's she off to?" Of course, people do not think this, but I continue to entertain this egocentric view.

My best experiences at airports thus far:

1. On our way home after a family trip in Sanibel Island, my parents come back after talking to the airlines at Ft. Lauderdale airport to tell us that we are re-routing and staying another week in Ft. Lauderdale! 
2. My first plane ride alone at 10 years old to visit my best friend Celeste in Ft. Myers 
3. Going on a father/daughter trip to Chicago, arriving at Nashville airport only to find our flight was delayed. Instead of waiting for the delayed flight, my father came back to tell us that we were going on the next flight to NYC instead (pre-911 restrictions).
4. Volunteering to be the next day-flyer at Charles de Gaulle airport due to an overbooked flight. As a gift from United Airlines, I was put in a 5 star hotel that night with free meals, and flew 1st class the next day. First class should be called "kick ass." 
5. When moving to France, I was worried about how to get on a train from Paris to my little town with all my baggage and lack of knowledge. On my flight over to Paris, I sat next to a lovely French old lady who was going the same place I was. She took care of everything for me!

Book Worm

Take a Look, it's in a book, the reading rainbow

Photo above by The Selby

 I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor

-"I am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel 

"April Come She Will"

"…sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time."

-High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

 I have two specific sentimental songs in mind when I think of this Nick Hornby quote above. The first song  is "April Come She Well" by Simon and Garfunkel (How Apropos as April 1st is tomorrow?). The song is so beautiful that  I don't know whether to cry or feel infinite joy. It was featured on The Graduate, my favorite film.

 

The next song "Feel Flows" by The Beach Boys floods me with the same emotions. Incidentally, I found  illustrations of the lyrics on Katie C. Turner's Flickr. The song makes you feel both sentimental about the past and hopeful for the future.

 

Although the memories of Mr. Belding on Saved By The Bell do make me feel both Nostalgic and Hopeful,  I doubt that his Karaoke Album will. I have not listened to it, but I assume that  it does not deserve to reside in a category alongside The Beach Boys and Simon and Garfunkel. Despite this discrepancy, I had to seize the opportunity to conclude with this gem of a find: