Peeling Pumpkins:

In 1996 I was not speaking to my father. Of course I had my reasons, being 15 and angry at the little things. For reasons I cannot remember, having to do with my muteness, I was basically grounded for six months. In the six months that I was grounded, on weekends after football games and band competitions I was confined to the house until my mother got home, but she worked on weekends so I really didn't see that much of her anyways.
So on the weekends, Saturdays especially, we (as in my brother and I) were assigned mundane tasks. For example, because my dad liked to have stew every single Saturday and Sunday in some form, we had to do things like peel bags of potatoes and carrots and clean and chop celery, find other things to put in the stew like ground beef and raisins, tomato paste and sweet potatoes. It was really gross if you think about it now, but then we just didn't want to do it and then we were finished building it, there was nothing else to do but eat it.
One particular October, there was a giant pumpkin growing in our backyard. It was probably three times the size of my head at the time and I was particularly interested in it because I thought it would make a great Jack-o-Lantern. I imagined the faces that I could carve in it; it was a fun thing to imagine when you are grounded for six months I suppose.
One Saturday morning I woke up and shuffled down the stairs with the cat at my feet and the pumpkin was sitting on the kitchen table next to the cutting board. I thought that this would be great because I could use my designs and make my Jack-o-Lantern now, although I found it strange to make one a week before Halloween. So I made some breakfast and sat next to the pumpkin to think. My dad came up from the basement for some coffee and said in his most irritating voice possible:
"Hey, I need you to peel that pumpkin."
At first I didn't think I heard him right. Who peels pumpkins? The small potato peeler whizzed passed my ear and onto the newspaper that the pumpkin was situated on. My dreams of a perfect Jack-o-Lantern were shattered. Because I wasn't speaking to him, I didn't ask any questions. I finished my breakfast and fed the cat and warily* regaurded the pumpkin.
Oh I know what you're thinking:
"Why not chop the pumpkin in four pieces, gut the thing and peel it like that so it would be super duper easy," right?
I looked at that pumpkin and looked at the peeler with the angered nonsense of a fifteen year old. I picked up the peeler and began.
The outside is the easy part, I thought, as I peeled the pumpkin and the sticky juice coated my hands and dried into a chalky white mess underneath my fingernails and the creases of my knuckles. The sweetly bitter smell of the pumpkin permeated the air; it was sick, really. For an hour and a half I grumbled and peeled and peeled, from smooth, flat surfaces to bumpy warts to peculiar creases in the flesh, I peeled that pumpkin. I hated that pumpkin. The newspaper soaked up the sticky mess until it became a soggy pulp underneath the base of the squash. The flesh took on indentations of my hands and fingernails and I became an animal, scraping and growling, howling to myself: Never again.
After disrobing the monster, I took out the biggest knife we owned and sliced it open, scooped out the innards and threw them in the sink to be sorted for eating later. I butchered it into steaks then cutletts then chunks. And then it was dead.
My father came upstairs just as I finished. He looked at me, my cheeks smeared with pumpkin juice, guts in my hair, the knife in my hand, and then the pumpkin as if to say, "You actually did it?"
"You know, pie would be nice," he said, grabbed a cup of coffee and went back down to the basement.

The One Where I somehow Found Myself in Spain:

This weekend I was invited to stay at my roommate, Minét's, Pyrenees Mountain home. Of course I said yes.
Day one:
We began our journey on Friday at 8 am, after leaving the cat with enough food and water for three days. We parted in Minét's tiny european style car (though it is a Ford) and watched as the sun crept up over the hills and flatlands outside of Toulouse inspiring some kind of heavenly watercolor in the sky. The Pyrenees were off in the distance and the cows were lowing loudly as they were waking up. By 9am we made it to a small village called Foix because there is a famous chateau in the center on a huge rocky hill. Chateau Foix, to be exact. We walked around the town, which was bustling because of the open markets and shops; old people shuffled everwhere and Minét and I took our time to get to the Chateau, going on the side streets, smelling the first breads of the Patisseries and visiting a church. We made it to the bottom of the Chateau but we had to climb a hill to get to it so we got right down to it and climbed...up and up until we got to the top and could see the entire city from the walls of the ancient building. We could not go in, however, and so we took pictures and gazed a while at the remains of an old church in the distance on top of a small hill-like mountain; the only remains of the church is the cross that sits, determined, on the edge of the mountain peak.
After the Chateau, we headed off again leaving behind Foix, stopping at an ancient wall painting museum that we didn't go inside of, and it was off to the mountains again. We had to drive up to the very top of one of the mountains and go all the way back down. The roads were inducing a sickness in me and I had to close my eyes periodically but I couldn't for too long...it was too beautiful! The Pyrenees were closing in on us, dotted with the reds, yellows, greens, browns and oranges of Automn, and cows. Mountain cows dotted the mountainside, balancing on rocks, eating the last sweet grasses of summer before they had to be rounded back up for their winter in barns. They are NOTHING like American cows, they are lean and fit and beautiful...an American cow, fat, unhealthy and not so attractive, would roll off of the mountainside in no time flat! I couldn't help but take pictures of everything. When we neared Minét's village of Osseja, I could see it in the distance. Osseja sits snuggly in the bowl of the French Pyrenees, surrounded and not to be bothered, green and fresh. Every house has flowers because that is their past time: gardening. Everyone has a beautiful garden with roses and grapes and fruit trees. Pink and white flowers spill from windows in every house. Cats and dogs lounge, sheep sleep, horses play and cows eat; the place bleeds relaxation.
Minét's house is a gorgeous one. She shares it with her sister and her sister's two dogs who all live upstairs in the other part of the house. Minét is seldom home, although it would seem she was because it is such a warm place to be. Her back yard has these miniature pear trees and apple trees, a rose bush and a perfect lawn. There is a small swimming pool as well which was covered up for the winter. As soon as I walked to the back all I saw aside from the fruit trees at first was the mountains. Just there, like a wall of natural protection. Secure.
When we got there, Minét informed me immediately that we were to go to her family's clinic to eat. The she explained that her grandmother opened up a clinic for people with respiratory problems (like tuberculosis) to heal. And they're building another one. And we were to eat at the clinic. So I went, amazed at the history that Minét was telling me about her grandmother's triumph with tuberculosis and how she opened up a clinic, even though she was not a doctor. So we ate lunch and had some wine and then we took a five minute tour of the little town (yes it only took five minutes). Afterwards, we waited on some friends of Minét's and then Minét informed me that not only were we frolicking in the Pyrenees, but that Spain was about...say...three minutes down the road. Did we go? Hells yes! We piled into her car and were in Spain in three minutes as I giggled to myself that I could step in France and Spain at the same time. The town was a little Spanish one but they only spoke Catalan. So lucky me both Minét and her friend Margot can speak fluent Catalan...ooooh yeah. We had some churros, took a long walk in the village, window shopped and then returned to France at around 7pm for dinner at the clinic. Then Minét and I went to see a Gerrard DePardu movie called Quand j'etais un chanteur. It was pretty good. Then we came back and went to bed. End day one.

Day Two:
Minét did a lot of work in the garden until 12pm. We did a lot of walking on this day; we actually walked up the mountain road with Margot. There were so many old abandoned farm houses (yes I poked my head in a few of them and it was spooooky), doe eyed milk cows, balancing mountain cows, fat horses and also there is a house that sits on the edge of one of the mountains. It is a huge house where a woman lives all alone, and people say she likes it that way. We only saw it from a distance but it was clearly being lived in and clearly hard to get to. Minét started to get tired (I mean come on she's in her 60s!) and she had to pee "faire de peepee." So She peed on the side of the road behind some trees and me and Margot laughed at her. We turned around and headed back after two hours and went to Margot's house for juice and an apple tart that she baked for us earlier. Then we spent the rest of the day relaxing around the house and recovering from that crazy mountain walk we had just taken.

Day Three (today):

Today we went to Spain again for the open market after coffee and this weird custardy cake. I bought myself two scarves that the French seem to wear a lot of. This market was fabulous, everything was fresh. There was fish, salt fish, cheeses, meats, veggies and shiney ripe fruits. Then there were clothes and lingerie being sold right on the streets! Minét bought herself a new plant. Then we did some window shopping at these chic clothing stores. We headed back at around 1pm for lunch at the clinic then we packed up our stuff to get ready to come back to Toulouse.
We left at 3pm

and now here I am.

Hooved Beasts:
He was sitting in the train station sleeping, I saw, with a cane next to him and a shopping bag. There were others sitting in the connected seats of the train station waiting area, scattered in that way people do in the cities when they don't wish to know one another. I sat behind him to wait. Something came up behind me like a cat, a smell-shit and piss and dirt-the smell of sickness and uncleanliness. I looked up and noticed that the others who were sitting were arranged in a semi-circle, some looking at me slantedly, like hooved beasts watching the crocodiles in the water during the drought special I saw on the National Geographic channel. I then realized quickly that the beast being avoided was the sleeping man.I immediately moved seats and settled in with the rest of the livestock.Directly across but an almost safe distance away from the sleeping man, I watched him sleep and took a closer look at his appearance. He was comfortably seated with his legs crossed and arms crossed across his chest. He wore a dusty old jean jacket and black pants that were tattered and shredded at the bottom with wrinkly dress shoes. His face was brown from random dirt and oil, and I could see it encrusted into the lines of his face. He was balding at the top of his head and the shit was, indeed, matting the top. Dog shit, probably, and his leg was wet with something and I could only imagine that it was probably dog piss; I could see him sitting on the side of the road in my mind, hand out, sitting cross-legged. A dog walks up and sniffs him, the leaves of his hair the trunk of his waist, and lifts a leg to relieve itself on his roots. People walk by not noticing. People don't give money to the inanimate. So he rises, eyes tired, to search for a suitable place to sleep; where dogs won't piss on him and people won't ogle his misfortune.Another woman goes to sit where I was sitting but pops back, as if someone hit her, before sitting down and looks at the man in disgust. The hooved beasts say nothing, but she joins us in our little herd, says nothing to any of us, and takes her seat on the far end of the room.

"Do You Know Michael Jackson?"

The music was entrancing and the company slightly blurred after four glasses of red wine. But he was talking politics I remember, and I was responding in my broken French. In the background, aside from the music, another person, a son I believe, handsome I know, was chanting to me in Spanish jibberish: "Si, si, si...hola, hola, que pasa?...OUI en ESPANGNOL vous ne parle pas en Français, it's bad I tell you..."
I appeased him with a cracked "Como estas?" because I do not speak Spanish and hardly French it seems. This sparked a rash of laughter. The politics, featuring Hillary Clinton, turned into the unfairness of renting an appartment in France because of "le caution" or the triple deposits that one sometimes must pay. This scared me but I said nothing. He was looking at me the whole time at random because he knew of my failed search for an appartment, and he smirked in a friendly way while eating sausages and discussing with my host why this "caution" deposit is the cause of a lot of homelessness and needyness in France.
The handsome son sat in front of me with his son in his lap and laughed, "You are American...Do you know Michael Jackson?? DO YOU??" Then, bouncing the boy on his knee, added sarcastically, "All Americans know Michael Jackson!"
The cat came into the living room after his banishment outdoors. He slinked up to my feet quietly and hooked my pant leg with one claw and yowled to be petted. The discussion came to a short halt and everyone looked at the cat, his big yellow eyes imploring me.
"Il m'adore," I said, he's in love with me, of the cat as if explaining myself to them.
The smirking man looked at me, amused, covered his mouth as though he was going to tell me a secret and said in English: "Are you sleeping with him?"
I could say nothing at first but I worked up a response, "No I had to tell him that we can only be friends." The man smiled big and poured himself another glass of wine and I had one more as well.
At the end of the night the children were already in their pyjamas and I was feeling a bit warm and sleepy myself. The man announced his departure way after the handsome son said his goodbyes. He kissed me three times on the cheeks, told me to have nothing but coffee with milk, baguettes and wine and to be disgustingly French from now on; to which I agreed.
I had coffee with milk and a baguette for breakfast this morning.