As I said I would, I'm posting today about the attention to detail I'm noticing everywhere here. Perhaps this is another case of my eyes being opened to the small simply by virtue of the newness of this place, but I suspect that what I'm seeing is proof of a cultural difference between France and the U.S. At home, we value function and efficiency over all else; here, aesthetics seem to be prized. Now, most of the details I've seen are both aesthetically pleasing and functionally useful, but my sense is that the beauty of the detail wouldn't generally have been considered at all in the construction of similar details in the U.S.

I mentioned yesterday that this cultural tendency to value beauty and pleasure has an affect on time as well, and I noticed that again today. Our major morning task was to walk the roughly two miles to the larger grocery store to replenish supplies. (The fact that Finn is eating us out of house and home -- and, of course, our mini-fridge -- means more frequent grocery trips!) On the way, we stopped at a clothing store to get Vivi a new hat, as she had tossed hers out of the stroller without me noticing on our walk yesterday afternoon. The store was sort of on par with Old Navy -- lots of clothes, crowded aisles, mostly casual-wear. (As an aside, the price of clothes here is crazily high! It looked like most of the items in this particular store were made in France--not made in China or India, as many clothes one would buy in the U.S. are--and I'm supposing that might account for the higher prices. The hat I bought Vivi, for instance, is a simple cotton bucket hat, that would probably have cost me $3 - $4 at a store like Old Navy or Target at home. Here, it was 9 euros, which, with the exchange rate, comes to something like $13-$14.) At any rate, to return to my original point about pleasure being valued over economy here, I, being in a hurry, quickly walked into the store, picked a hat off the first rack of hats I saw, and got in line to pay. There were two customers in front of me, and neither had a large number of items to purchase, but I waited in line for 20 full minutes. Why? Because the cashier had long, cheerful conversations with each customer as she slowly (very slowly) rang up their items. As I waited, a couple more people got into line behind me. I looked back at them several times, assuming they'd start to show signs of impatience, but they stood placidly waiting. In New York, I know, I would have begun to hear murmured curses from the others in line after three or four minutes, and by ten minutes people would have begun leaving the line in exasperation. Here, however, no one seemed to mind. I thought back to my Provencal luncheon on Saturday and the way I had to check my own impatience at the length of the several-course meal; why was I in such a hurry? It's not as if I'm on a real schedule here. I don't have to be anywhere but where I am. I'm just unaccustomed to taking the time for pleasantries--something that seems to be the top priority among people here. Time--like architecture, food, and conversation--reflects not a need to live for economy, efficiency and utility, but rather to live for enjoyment. When we return to our regular life in the U.S., though of course I know we'll slip right back into our usual habits for the most part, I hope to carry at least a fragment of this lesson about enjoyment back with me.

As a last thought on time, today is the first day time has seemed to run at its usual speed--in part because I slept in so very, very late. I thought we had jet lag beat, but I'm afraid I was wrong. I'm having a lot of trouble with insomnia here, and even with all of the walking I'm finding myself wide awake at midnight, 1 a.m., even 2 a.m. Vivi, unfortunately, has a slightly different problem, and will go to bed at the normal hour (8 p.m. or so), but wakes up at 3 a.m. routinely and wants to get up for the day. This means I've just gone to sleep when she wakes up, and then am reawakened (and kept awake) by her refusal to lie back down in her bed. Last night I finally got her back to sleep around 5:30, and the two of us then slept until 9 a.m. I'm hoping we can establish a more regular sleeping/waking pattern, though in part that seems futile, as we're here another three weeks and then head to WA (which is 9 hours behind us here in France) for the last month of our summer break. We may not be back in a good routine until September!

So, onto the photos of details I've noticed. Here are a few from last night's walk:

The awning of a boucherie (butcher shop).

A doorknob. (All of the doorknobs are placed, oddly, in the center of the doors. I'm not sure if this is purely an aesthetic choice, or if it serves some ergonomic purpose.)

The door of a local shop.

This little metal appendage was placed near the doorstep of a shop. We think it's intended as a boot-scraper.

Pinecone-shaped knobs at the end of a wrought iron grille on a house window.

The lovely iron work on the bridge railing in town.

Part of the old village's stone wall. I love the attention to detail here -- and the way the plants have grown through the stones and now spill down the wall (they put me in mind of that line from William Carlos Williams's poem "A Sort of Song" -- "saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks"). Also, the little triangular shaped dark spots in this image are actually holes in the stonework, into which we saw birds disappearing.

This apartment building is one of the more romantic buildings I've seen. (Notice the pretty tile work pattern near the roofline.)

Here, two photos of the same bridge, one from in front of it (below), one from beneath it (above). Nathan noticed that the underside of the bridge had been painted a pretty coral color with striped borders. How rare to see even the underside of a bridge given careful attention!

A front door.

Two final notes today. The first is that we've found what seems to be a local candy specialty, calisson. We bought some at the grocery store, though I think we'll need to try it from a candy shop to get a taste of quality candy. It's good though -- even the grocery store brand. I love marzipan, so I knew I'd like it though. There's also a candy I've seen in several patisseries that looks a bit like a loaf of meringue. I'm not sure what it is, but I plan on trying it. It might be nougat.

The other note is that I believe I've properly identified the flowering bushes I'm seeing everywhere here as a species of oleander. They look quite like the oleander plants I remember seeing in CA when we lived there.

More soon. I think we might head to Edith Wharton's garden at Castle Saint Claire this evening, and if we do I'll post photos of that tonight or tomorrow morning.