Flash-Bikes

It was July of a year I don’t remember. I was in Pau, France, taking a third-year course in French. July is the perfect time of year in many parts of the world, and it certainly was the case for Pau and its eighty thousand residents.

The city itself is not spectacular, but then France has such a high aesthetic level that ‘not spectacular’ in that country has a lot to offer nevertheless. Pau is an old city in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, said by some sources to derive its name from the castle palisades. Something doesn't add up, because if the castle is thohught to have been built in the eleventh century, yet the area had a Gallo-Roman population, wouldn't that have been a long time to go without a name? 

Maybe becoming the capital of Béarn in the fifteenth century was enough for people to feel no need of digging up the more distant past. Besides, it is the birthplace of Henri IV or some other monarch, although I actually haven’t checked the accuracy of my memory. I do like the old stuff, though: fact or fiction, dress, food or art, I love seeing it and learning about it. (I think I've mentioned elsewhere that I once wanted to become an archaeologist.) The climate helped, too, and wealthy tourists early on were good for the economy.

My class at the university was a tightly-run ship by a very organized instructor. She proudly discussed local culinary options, excursion possibilities, concerts, and films. She also knew how to make use of local moments as assignment material. It was brilliant pedagogy. We students attended events, interacted with people there, then reported on it in class. Hands-on learning. Exactly my style. There was no way I, all of us, wouldn’t complete those assignments willingly. This was what we language educators all call meaningful input. Lots of input, and very meaningful.

The assignment this time was to situate ourselves (individually, not as a class) along the route on the day the étape of the Tour de France went through Pau. (I had watched quite a bit of the cycling event, especially when Induráin the Basque kept winning.) 

The Tour was a French tradition dating from 1903. Its starting day was July 1 and the finish sometime around the twenty-fourth of July. Intense days with intense geography, weather of all sorts, danger, glamour, and repetition. It brought people together, plain andd simple. It showed off the incredible French lands, taught spectators on screens a little geography, had them - us - on the edge of our seats instead of taking a sumer nap.

Since my watching had been through Spanish television, I had all the jargon of the tour but in the wrong language. Now I would learn it in French and still didn't know it in English. I was always in Spain for the summer, hence the Tour was in Spanish, at least for me.

The day, as I recall, was the classic 'sunny and bright', which really is a redundant phrase but that’s what comes to mind. Lots of sun, although no bikes yet, no cyclists… they were anticipated, but still only a gleam in the eyes of the crowd. I can see myself this very moment, being jostled and with my ears tuned in as much as possible to the raucous language around me. I am thinking.

********

Everybody is out everywhere. Some are selling Tour de France souvenirs, others are buying them, en masse. It’s a yellow, black, and white mass of bodies and bikes, moving, speaking loudly, anticipating. It all had started hours before my arrival. (I am not an early riser.) There was a general air of :”We’re the real attraction here. We are, the people of Pau. We just take our time.” 

My French teacher at USAC, the university consortium, had warned the class that the cyclists would be flying through, and she smiled. The passage of the Tour through Pau was kind of like life: lightning quick. We had the day off with our assignment to see the cyclists, the crowds, the yellow and black and white. We were going to have to think on our feet to communicate in French, too. 

I was absolutely in the moment, observing and listening rather than speaking. This was not classroom French I was hearing. It didn’t matter; getting caught up in the revelry was still possible. And yes, I bought a cap with the three afore-mentioned colors. 

*******

There is intense immobility around me. Intense silence, as if someone had turned down the volume on the day. Knowing, most likely, that it was too soon, a few heads here and there popped out alongside the street and turned to their left. Force of habit. Years of living this moment, in Pau. Impressively simple, joyous. The sun helped. So did the view for which Pau is known: the Boulevard des Pyrénées says it all. It was a required daily walk, even for me, despite the distance from my place of residence in the city.

Beneath the sunny sky, there is a quick murmur and an even quicker flash: the image of a stream of strong bodies, sweat gleaning everywhere, slicing the air. There are dozens and they have all gone by as indicated: in two minutes. Because the spectator is standing still, while the cyclist is moving, maybe needing close to half an hour to traverse the entire city of Pau. The spectator can only measure in time the space that goes from the beginning to the end of the line of cyclists. That’s why it seems so short to us but to them it is kilometers.

********

I remember my cycling days. That was so long ago. 

Here is the Sacred Grove. I am finally here. I can sense something, but don’t think it’s the reason a Mormon would give; that. This is where Joseph Smith came upon the Book of Mormon, or at least the Golden Plates. Supposedly he showed them to the Eight Witnesses in 1829, but it wasn't until the early twentieth century that the site got its name. It was always part of the Smith Family Farm, which was mentioned in classes at school, although teachers didn't bring up the Golden Plates if they could help it. Mormonism. Born in our back yard, but there were none residing there. Everybody knew why, but few would say anything. People around town were good at dropping mammoth silences into rooms, exchanging careful glances, and acting like they were completely - brains included - made of wood. Younger people made up their own stories.

Sacred Light comes to mind. It seems to be about seeing for me, not believing in a religion but in what light can do to the mind. I see that the filtered sunlight is creating the stage for a chipmunk who is just as bedazzled as I am. I have always loved chipmunks. This is good company.

My friend and I are both watching the little chipmunk. In turn, it seems to be watching us. I know both my friend and I feel safe here, in this spot, with this sunlight. Safe, protected, knowing that we are growing up where we were meant to grow up.

We are aware, in the middle of all our safety, that we are on the edge of town. We have never gone this far alone, without a parent. We have our bikes, but we don’t have cars. We feel like we are at the edge of something, in a twilight zone with sifting sunlight, almost where we are not supposed to go without telling our parents. We feel guilty, yet it is not our fault.

Sensing our distress, the chipmunk has skittered away. Maybe it will return, but the original angle of sun and pine branches is gone forever.

We have arrived at the Sacred Grove not really knowing we were heading here, not sure of its exact location. There is no entry fee to this holy (for some) place. The site is fairly hidden, but it's open to all who care to seek it out. There are no signs except a faded wooden board on Canandaigua Road saying 'Smith Farm' and then a beaten-down, narrow path to the grove. We have arrived easily, as if we had been here before, although I check with my friend and we haven't.

Author's Note: The previous flashback has apparently become a Tour of that time, not of France, but over a few étapes or stages of girlhood.

 That was a whole summer of bike riding freedom, with my best friend Dee. Both of us had blue bikes that were similar in many ways, except I think hers was nicer, looked faster. That could have been true, because her faily had a lot more money than mine did, even though it didn't affect our friendship. What mattered was that we shared that freedom. Our families trusted us and we deserved that trust, I think.  

I think I was fourteen the year I reached the Sacred Grove. There really weren’t many summers where we lived attached to the seats of our bicycles. There should have been many, but I doubt now there were even three. First we’d had to reach the age where we could circulate independently of mom and dad. Then we quickly entered the age where we wanted to hang out in places where the boys were (just like the song by Connie Francis, it's a real oldie). 

A pair of adolescent girls riding around on their bikes suddenly wasn’t a cool image. We reined in our independence, started showing up at the community center, acting like we were trying to learn how to shoot foul shots. Surely as damsels in distress we would get some offers of assistance. (Please know how embarrassed I am to admit this now.)

The fact that I can't recall the exact year doesn't mean it wasn't a summer of awakening. Obviously it was, because I've already described the revelation of the Sacred Grove. A very little grove, it was nevertheless bigger than my town. Maybe it was symbolic, though, of finding my own golden plates in a language I couldn't yet read. Golden being a metaphor, because there do not seem to be any deposits of that metal in the entire state. Golden could refer to sandstone, however.

Because of that awesome pine-cut light, I think it was my last summer of innocence. Innocence as peace of mind and body, feeling safe from anything around me or even further away, like Vietnam. You see, innocence doesn't always have to be of a sexual nature. I had suddenly figured out the meaning of silence and illumination, punctuated by a single chipmunk. Thus passion begins, a lusty search for what mattered and what places mattered, began that day.

It had only been two miles out of town, maybe three from my door. Yet another door had opened and I was on the verge of stepping through it, out of my known world until the one not yet known.

Author's Note: The following might be the flashback of a flashback, but that sounds rather absurd and doesn't matter. There remains a single thread linking things together, I believe.

I lift my gaze up and toward the magnificent Pic du Midi de Bigorre from Boulevard des Pyrénées. The backdrop of the promenade is comprised of layers of blue mountainous shapes. They look as if they were made of ragged stacks of powdered pigment. Pigment like you would see if visiting a place where artisanal pastels are made. In this case, where the blues or bleus of France, the pastel that is art and not food, are created. This is, more than my younger yellow, my most favorite hue in the world, no matter what the shade. Oh, Sunset and evening star,/And one clear call for me!/And may there be no moaning of the bar,/When I put out to sea. 

Tennyson's sea was not mine, though. Mine was not a thought of life's end, but rather of life's aesthetic. I was ecstatic to be in Pau, watching and listening.

I am watching the color closely and have even painted it in an art class taken recently. Or years ago. The color does not coordinate easily with the deeply, aggressively deckled edges of the craggy levels stacked one behind another like a tunnel book. They aren't deadly; they're seductive, beckoning.

The perfectly-coordinated shades of blue are making me beg to wear them. The imagined textures urge me to stroke them, hoping some of their color will enter my veins and I might discover that I too was once from Béarn. (I was once from Swabia, according to my genetic background, but we can have ties to many places, can we not?) 

All of this because I was in Pau and the bicycles flashed by me, so quickly, that I didn't see them. So I found the other bikes. The ones that had gone to the Sacred Grove and had brought me all the way to France and the incredibly blue Pyrenees.