Things have a way of coming together when we are in our element. Time is elastic and we travel in the past and future while reveling in the present. Things unsettle, settle, shift, and expand. Reclamation, reconnection, and resurrection. A vision of the future opens anew and trust in the goodness it holds rises. Have you ever lost your confidence without realizing it? Walked around apparently dribbling it until a good friend asks where it went and you freeze at the truth of its disappearance? It has to be somewhere, you think, then trace the steps back holding your breath at the sights of erosion along the way. Seeing them enlightens even if it hurts.
What am I trying to say? that beautiful days along the Mediterranean swimming and floating in the sea, reading a book, reflecting, jotting, drawing, watching others’ pleasure, eating and sleeping well, exploring the coast line, and being visited by a cat can stitch shredded stories into a new one with threads of confidence. Probably for anyone, beautiful days doing what you love in places you love can do that.
An uninvited white cat came into my life along a river in the center of France thirty-some years ago and stayed nearby for almost two. Coming to the bedroom to wake me in the morning, accompanying me to the mailbox, through the garden on daily flower checks, then curling up nearby on the table as I wrote. I fell in love with him while I resented having been gifted the responsibility–he was a present to my lover, who eventually became my husband, from his son. I encouraged the cat’s freedom and his jauntiness. I fed him and caressed him. A neighbor who once shot and injured him finally succeeded in killing him. (A man whose father killed cats and whose mother was then killed by a cat’s scratch on her ankle.) I learned about the sight of the beloved white cat’s bloated corpse some weeks after returning from my honeymoon when my husband finally told me he had found his body floating in the river on our wedding day and had spared me that news. That loss was a bigger blow than I anticipated. Soon after, I became pregnant. As soon as our son could play with things, he played with the stopper and chain of the bathtub, just as that cat loved to. I told myself he was back. Our son never liked hearing that. yet he, too, became a writing companion, in his way, napping nearby as I wrote, accompanying me on garden tours, waking me in the morning, and always over time encouraging my writing.
I eventually left the marriage. A lot of confidence eroded during those years without my realizing it. And there was a lot of France in those years, too. After loving it, I disliked it intensely for a while – but that was more about people and systems than the place. Alone with the nature of it, I felt high. I wondered if I could come back. If I could be comfortable here.
When I arrived in Cassis recently, I went to Préambule, hailed as the last bookstore before the sea. A paperback seemed to jump into my hands – Frédéric Ploquin’s EPSTEIN, Les secrets de la filière française – a loose translation is The Secrets of the French Network – or it could also be the French Supply Chain, which is more appropriate to its contents. I turned it over and saw Jean-Luc Brunel’s name–the man I mentioned in an earlier post, “Lucy and the Epstein Files” – a man I spent some time with and wrote about and who received something else from me than what he wanted.
I bought the book and learned more about his life, arrest, imprisonment, and death. I saw within it the names of other French and American agents I had met (also fictionalized in Lucy, go see.,) and friends of Brunel, and Epstein I dined with in Paris, and throughout those pages I visited again the apartment and places where I and many others went with Brunel. I was struck by his honesty with me and his lies to the investigators. He was unaware I was investigating him in my own way. I’ve only thought recently about how that time with him turned me away from building a life in Paris I was imagining then, and once again away from the modeling world for a while. All those years he was hurting girls and women, and then, finally, at over 70 years of age being held accountable for it. It surprised me how long he lasted in jail, but not that his last attempt at taking his life was not his first. One could say that all that information was lost with him, yet had he lived, I doubt he would have divulged any of it. He lied on the stand until the end. I’m still thinking about the things I read, and about Daniel Siad, who also died young suddenly and recently, who also was part of that network/supply chain, and how it appears that no one other than Ghislaine Maxwell is being held accountable in the US. Even more than all this, as much as I would like to see all perpetrators brought to justice, I wonder how much trafficking is still going on while eyes are trained on the past.
What will it take to stop abuse?
I thought about that in Cassis as I swam in the mornings, and floated and bobbed in the clear turquoise waters. I am sure it involves talking about it. I thought about Rilke’s mention that we pass information about sexuality along in an unopened envelope from generation to generation. I read during the hottest hours, looking out at the sea from the air-conditioned hotel room. In the evening I ate delicious fish and then I swam, floated, and bobbed again as the sun set, watching it highlight the terra cotta cliffs and the limestone 13th century chateau. I finished the book on the terrace using my phone for light while the full moon rose. Then I took a long bath and had a great sleep.
In the morning, I opened the terrace door to let in the sea air. As I snapped a few joyful selfies in bed, I felt a presence scurry by and turned and saw nothing. Some moments later, a white cat came purring, jumped into the bed, and pawed me, looking for caresses just as that beloved cat had done decades ago. He even looked like him. I caressed his neck, face, belly, and slithered his tail, and he curled into me and purred deeply. My body recalled the cat and life I loved, made, and left., as I remembered how the shedding hair annoys me. To feel again the breathing together resounded something unnameable and primitive in me. When I left to swim, the cat spread himself across the top step of the spiral staircase leading to the room, right at the gate, like a sentinel. And when I came back from another delicious frolic in the sea, he was still there. By the time, I left to check out, he was gone, without a farewell, and I was okay with that.
I stayed in a different hotel that night, and explored another beach. Boaters that evening brought memories of childhood summers on Frentress Lake and swimming there, too, in the morning, afternoon, and evening, families and friends gathering for beauty and pleasure. Barefoot amid roots, stones, and earth, the sea evaporating from my skin in the sun, I felt sparklingly alive.
A year here now, I can say that passing through here anew, living here, has reminded me who I am, was, and am becoming–an unexpected gathering.
The cat reunion stays with me. As does the sea. I close my eyes and feel its colors and freshness swirling in me. This week I return to work at The American College of the Mediterranean, as the Chief of Staff, a promotion. I’m so grateful.
I’ve read that confidence is innate and gets covered up, also that it is built with courage and patience. I wish I had clear-cut answers to the questions posed here. I just wanted to tell you about the cat.
Thanks for your time and reading. I’m glad you’re here. Marianne
