Topic 153: Adventures While Pursuing an Idea

Carol:

Clochard

 The opportunity of going to school in France for a year was exciting and scary at the same time. My roommate Laurie was going, so it wasn’t that hard to convince my parents of our plan. I expected to become fluent in French, enjoy the Provencal countryside, and spend my holidays poking around Europe. I did not expect to meet Raoul.
 

Aix-en-Provence is a beautiful  city with a grand, tree-shaded boulevard called the Cours Mirabeau. Cafes with outdoor tables line  the street, perfect to linger over a café au lait and croissant before going to class. Laurie and I shared a room in an old farmhouse on the road to Marseilles, about 15 minutes by bus from the center of Aix. In the evenings we would usually  buy a roasted chicken and head back to our room for supper. But, sometimes we would stay in town for dinner and wine with friends, and that’s how I met Raoul.
 

It was common for musicians to show up in restaurants, play a few songs for tips, then head out to the next “venue.” Raoul played the guitar and sang a range of folk music  with a raspy, Tom Waits voice. He was very tall, over six feet six, curly headed with a bit of a beard, and one eye roamed. Not your typical Frenchman. And, not your typical boyfriend.
 

I can’t say that we really dated because Raoul never had any money. Each night, he played in the bars and restaurants around Aix, and the next day he would spend all the coins for food. One morning I saw him give away every franc he had to a vagrant huddled in a blanket on the sidewalk, an old clochard. Raoul was a young clochard. Not someone to write home to Mom about.
 

Cafe des Deux Garcons, Aix

Mostly, Raoul and I would meet at a café and talk for hours before he set out on his evening musical circuit. Sometimes we would join up with his older brother Bernard, who could usually be found in a café reading Herbert Marcuse. Bernard was not a clochard. He lived in an old apartment with little kids and a wife who was a professional ballerina. I think Raoul must have come to Aix because of Bernard. 
 

For several months, I did a lot of hanging out with Raoul and not much studying.  We would weave stories together about buying a boat and sailing around the Mediterranean.  Raoul was at heart an innocent dreamer, and I loved the idea that he made me a part of those dreams. One day he decided to return to Strasbourg, and we said good-bye. He invited me for a visit, and I stayed at the home of his very traditional mother. She gave me steak tartare for dinner, and I was sick all night on the train back to Marseilles.
 

At the end of the school year, my friend Bonnie arrived from Canada for our long-anticipated summer trek around Europe. In July we headed back to Aix for the music festival, and there was Raoul sitting in a café.  Same routine, same dreams, same slight temptation on my part to shuck off conventionality and responsibilities for a vagabond life with Raoul. Slight temptation.
 

Thirty years later, I returned to Aix with my husband and two children. It was July, and the Cours Mirabeau was crowded with tourists for the music festival. I couldn’t help but think about Raoul and wonder what had happened to him--excited at the possibility that I might hear his raspy voice, scared that I might see him wrapped in a blanket on the sidewalk. A clochard, no longer young.

Sources:
Image of Cours Mirabeau Cafe

Megan:

Ideas while pursuing adventure

I like this topic. I think it’s open to interpretation and there’s probably  an abundence of anecdotes that could relate back to it, but I can’t think of one.  I’m gonna be honest and admit that I cheated and read my mother’s essay. Well, the first paragraph anyway. As soon as I realized she wrote about studying abroad, I thought of something to say. And here it is.

When I was in college, I knew that I would study abroad, but I didn’t know where. Spain had originally been the plan, but although I had 4 years of Spanish in high school and a couple months of immersive study in Mexico, I never bothered to take a Spanish class in college. When I also changed my mind about my major and switched from art to creative writing, England was introduced as an option for my junior year. I remember this so clearly. I was sitting on the steps outside of the Tea Shop at Mills and I was talking to a friend who worked on the newspaper with me and my friend Kelly. I was frustrated because Kelly was going to Italy to study opera and I still had no idea what to do and deadlines were approaching and this girl I barely knew said, “You should go to Sussex. That’s where I went.” And that’s what I did.

That random choice influenced everything that happened for the next 8 years. Every decision I made from then on about my education, my career and my relationships was focused on being able to live in England. Now that I don’t live there anymore, my decisions are still mainly shaped around where I do want to live, which for now is here in Prescott.  As I mentioned yesterday, an opportunity has come up and if it pans out, I might get to stay here, but I would not be a librarian anymore.

Even though I’ve been unemployed for close to a year, I have never stopped thinking of myself as a librarian. Doctors go to med school, lawyers to law school and even if they aren’t practicing, they are still doctors and lawyers. I went to library school, so I am a librarian. The thing is, my degree is not in Library Science – it’s in Information Studies. It’s abstract on purpose, so that the graduates aren’t “restricted” by the qualification. I can take the same skills and be a database manager, a web designer, a research assistant or consult on project management and community outreach. There’s no such thing as being “just a librarian” but the career experience can be applied to more than just libraries.   I’m not sure I want to give up on being a librarian, but pursuing alternative ideas could open the door to another kind of adventure.