Le Mazel, Ardeche

From myaddress@ductape.net Wed Nov 6 18:17:30 2002
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 15:11:39 -0500 (CDT)
From: joshua
To: chealsea
Subject: le mazel, ardeche

I mention this because I'd like to dump out the events of the past weeks
in great detail, but I've lost a lot. There are things that I experienced
or thought that I wanted to save, and was certain that I'd remember them
when I got to a computer but was very wrong. Writing with pen and paper is
sort of annoying for me. It seems like maybe a better way to write, and
probably is the most convenient way to record dreams, little lyrical
thoughts or something on the train, in (just out of) the shower, etc.

In Paris, Boxer John decided to head to the Netherlands, and I went to Le
Mazel. I took a train to Montelimar, where I arrived at around 10 at night
and there were no more buses to Les Vans. I stayed at some dingy hotel,
where I watched some strange French movie called The Mystery at Scotland
Yard or something on the little TV in the room that you had to push the
volume buttons several times rather than the power button to turn on. I
paid extra for the remote, but it didn't work, and I didn't care enough to
go back downstairs and sound annoying. The next morning I got the bus to
Les Vans and was now within 7 km of the very small villa of Le Mazel.

It was sort of afternoon, and the town is very small. I saw a few bars and
the post office and little stores that were all closed. One place was sort
of open, called Le Homard Americain. The 'Americain' suggested maybe they
would maybe speak a little English. They did, but just that. The "Homard
Americain" is a movie, they say. Anyway, I ask the bartender if he knows
where Le Mazel is. Nope. I show him the map that Ryan had drawn for me.
Nope. He shows it to the coroner courier/ambulance driver/taxi of the
area. This guy is eating some sausage, and has a gander. There is really
no reason for him to help me, but he offers a ride anyway. I had been
trying to reach someone named Heidi, who lives nearby to arrange for a
ride up the mountains to the villa. She wasn't answering. I accept the
ride, and order a beer, but he says that we have to go now and someone
translated that he had to go play Father Christmas in like 30 min. I drank
the beer very quickly and hopped in the ambulance/taxi with an ununiformed
Santa.

When I get to Le Mazel, the sky is blue and the rocks (slate?) are this
strange light grey. It's amazing, the ride is amazing. No one is there,
except for 4 French construction workers that knew nothing of me coming
and had very little to do with the house. We had funny little
conversations in poor spanish/english/french/pantomime. They laughed that
I was in Le Mazel. There was no public phone around, and I had no key. I
had this bag of potato chips. They pointed to the next villa, which wasn't
more than a kilometer through the woods, but it was like around mountains
and down a valley and there's trees and stuff. I found a path and started
dropping potato chips as I went along, a little trick picked up from
Hansel and Gretal.

This well marked and old stone paved trail led me in no time to Banne.
There I found a pay phone, situated under the ruins of an old castle and
some houses. Not like a big castle up on a hill, but kind of like right
there. No one was around, really, and when cars drove past the people
seemed to look at me. I guess that's not abnormal. No answer from Heidi,
so I went back to Le Mazel and found an unlocked door to Ryan's studio. I
climbed up some really scary old metal ladder and then was on a second
level. I tried a window that had curtains, assuming that that would be
lived-in, but it was locked. I popped up from this balcony when I heard
Heidi calling Helllooooo. She asked if I was Joshua and blah blah blah.
She was very cool. She let me in, showed me around, and then we went on
some errands. Went to the garage to get a chainsaw fixed, but while they
were working on that, we ran over to a nursery to get a little tannenbaum
(she's German) and then to the farmer-woman's house to get the dinde
(turkey). Heidi was telling me how she had met the turkey and he was a
good one. It was like some arranged marriage, her and the turkey.

I stayed in Le Mazel for Christmas and read some Italo Calvino. Heidi's
family and some of their friends came to stay too. They were very nice and
I ate Christmas dinner with them. There were young kids that liked when
read Pippi Longstocking aloud in German, even though I didn't really
understand what I was reading. There were some teenaged kids too, named
Milan and Mascha. I got along with the family and they kids would
translate to English for me if something seemed particularly interesting.
There was one Jackass though named Tomas. I like him, but I have to say
that he's a Jackass. Heidi's mom was probably 60 or something and was
riding around inside the house on one of those scooters like a kid. She
was also very nice and smiles and all that. She spoke English.

I rode Ryan's bike down the mountain and to Les Vans. It's only 7km or so,
and only one turn. There are curvy mountain roads with cliffs and no
railings and barely enough room for two little cars to slide by. I pretty
much held the brake the whole way down. I bought something down in town,
got a little money and rode the bike back up. I wasn't sure that I was
going to be able to make it all the way, since most of it was fairly steep
and I've been smoking. I did though, and on the way, I stopped at some
land that Ryan wants to buy. It too is amazing, with terraced vines and
beautiful ruins. I would like to make some money and buy some land there.
The land seems very clean and sane and divine.

The house used to belong to a Swedish actress named Mai Zetterling, and
some of her things are still there. She has a nice library, which was
really cool to hang out in.

After a week in France, I went to Barcelona to meet Boxer John again.
Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to communicate with him and he had left
Barcelona hours before I got there. I had fallen asleep on a train and
ended up in Irun. When I arrived in Barcelona, I couldn't find any open
hostels, since there was some strange holiday called New Year's or
something and I didn't have a reservation anywhere. I found a quiet
seemingly untraveled street with some little art galleries on it and slept
for a while in the threshold of a loading dock. So far, that has been the
only time I really, really needed a sleeping bag. I did need it then
though. I woke up a few times during the night when I heard footsteps, but
for the most part I slept fairly well. After checking my mail, I learned
that Boxer John would be in Ciudad Real and I agreed to meet him the next
day. We met and nothing was happening in Ciudad Real. We went to
Algeceiras and spent the night in a pretty clean double room for not much
money.