Well, it's that time again. That time when I start receiving e-mails, from my wife, who is sitting across the room, telling me, sweetly, "Blog post, poo-head."

I had thought of a great beginning for a Fall Break post, but then I re-read the first few lines of the previous post by Erin. It turns out that I " promised to write a thoughtful, well-composed entry" about our France trip to complement her own recent(-ish) post. So I'll have to save my thoughts on autumn for my next post . . . which should be in March.

Concerning Frogs:

I'll be honest. When we started discussing a European trip for a belated honeymoon, I knew we would go to France. France is romantic, it is beautiful, it has Paris, and it is beloved of Erin. I had been to France and I had found it, well, nice--but England, that is my European home. Give me English hills and fields and ales, and you can keep your French je ne sais quoi. But marriage, I am told, involves sacrifice, so I held my tongue and only hinted, once or twice, that London is not so far from Paris. I knew we would go to France.

I loved it. That sounds stupidly obvious. Of course I loved it. Who takes a three week vacation in Europe with his beloved wife and does not love it? But what I mean to say is this: those three weeks were such a beautiful collection of lovely moments and experiences that I believe they will endure, along with my wedding day and the (future) birth of my children, as one of the richest times of my life. Each day of that trip has been and will be a feast for the memory.*

At the risk of seeming materialistic, or perhaps hedonistic, I have to admit that much of our delight was rooted in a very material thing, that is, food. I have never eaten such good food and probably never will again. It was the quantity, it was the quality, it was the variation and the presentation. We spent a lot of time and money on food. We ate pretty much whatever we wanted. It would be sin, I believe, for us to live thus habitually, but for a few weeks, it was innocent, fitting, and glorious. I will not list for you all of the dishes we had, nor will I try to describe them in any detail. We ate everything from steak in Paris bistros to lamb stew at Mont St. Michel to cheap kebab in a tortilla (filled with french fries!) on a Bordeaux street corner. We also had escargot a few times. I will be more specific about one dish I had, and then I will desist. For my final French dessert, I ate a hefty Belgian waffle--with creme brulee in the squares on top. Simple but brilliant. I don't think a better dessert exists.

There were other things besides food, of course. I will say that I liked Paris better this time. I didn't like it so well the first time I was there. I know that's a frivolous and ignorant opinion: of course Paris is an irreplaceable city, a city of high beauty, history, culture, etc., and I only betray poor taste in not "liking" it. One thing that helped was the smattering of French that I have picked up. I could read signs and speak with waiters, I could even run errands solo, and thus the city felt less foreign and more inviting. I still think I would need a full season there, or a year, or several, to have any kind of ownership of that place. So I suppose we'll have to go back.

One final thing, which I loved most of all: we saw more of France than just Paris. Even though nearly one-fifth of France lives in or near Paris, it's still only one place in a much larger place, and it offers a rich but still incomplete picture of France the nation. Until we went to Bordeaux and Brittany, I did not realize that not all French people were tall and lean and beautiful. (Some of them wear sweatpants, believe it or not. Some of them are slightly pudgy.) Likewise, I did not know, until we left Paris, how much of France is covered by good earth and growing things instead of marble and concrete. All of this was comforting to me, and it helped to make the country both more livable and more lovable.

Well, there it is. I am afraid this post was only thoughtful and not well-composed. And I am sorry that it does not capture any of the beauty of our trip. But I finished it, Erin. Who's the poo-head now? (Probably still me.)

*Memory, we often agree, can deceive. It erases, omits the pain in certain experiences, or sometimes completely transforms it into sweetness, and thus distorts those experiences in our consciousness. I am aware of this and I think one ought to take some care to remember things truly. But there is another thing to be said about memory. Sometimes the memory of an experience, though it changes the event through a different emphasis, is not falser but truer than that original experience. C.S. Lewis suggests this through one of his characters in the space trilogy, and it has illuminated by own thinking. This character says to another, a recent acquaintance, that "a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. . . . When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then--that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it." I try to take this attitude to my experiences, especially my travels. I try to pay close attention, not because I want to "take everything in" in and perfect that moment, but because I want more for the craft of memory later. I apologize for this digressive footnote, but I thought the idea was interesting and might amplify my meaning.