We're having a party tonight

This doesn’t have so much specifically to do with Le Vignaud, but somehow I feel it’s appropriate. There have been so many struggles in the past year–the difficulty of Jason and I separating, his move to France and ongoing complications with the house, and my six month odyssey that, at first, orbited around him. It’s been a year now since that fateful trip to the desert. Jason is in Europe with a car and possibly a house. I’m back on Wilson Drive and preparing for my own Burning Man adventure. But through it all we’ve had redbeans.

There was my 22 birthday, when Jason made a big pot of redbeans and we fed 17 people, all sitting on the steps of my front porch and laughing. There was the time I was WWOOFing in France and cooked a pot of beans, partly to show my gratitude to the family who had taken me in but also to feel connected to my warm sunny home half a world away. There was the pot of beans I cooked at Izzy’s house in Prague: it was a celebration of friends and a recreation of our Louisiana lives. Both of those meals involved failed attempts at biscuits. Later in Bonnat, Jason and I cooked an especially large pot of beans, with bay leaves picked from the tree in the backyard. We shared it with our new friends on Gigi’s birthday, and the next day he brought the food to his friend Breton, another Louisiana girl who had been stuck in a Parisian hospital. Luckily, that time my biscuits came out right, and I was glad to be able to share a bit of home.

So now I’m in my new home, just two doors down from my old blue house where we all had so much fun. Everything is familiar, but nothing is exactly the same. I have several pounds of beans simmering on my stove, waiting for tonight when 15 or so of my friends will come and join me for a meal. It’s such a New Orleans tradition, not just the food, but the act of using a pot of food as a nucleus for relationships. Tonight I’ll be completely immersed in my company as we feast and sweat on the back patio, but for a moment this morning, as I dropped the laurier into my giant pot, I couldn’t be sure where I was.

I cooked up a mess of beans to celebrate the new president while WWOOFing

Strap yourself
To the tree with roots
You ain’t goin’ nowhere…

Gigi’s gone. She left La Creuse this afternoon bound for the sunny south and Dirty Darren and I were left at the train station in Gueret alone… It has become a strangely familiar feeling being left at that platform and wondering where to turn next. Many have come and gone before and I hope many will come and go yet. Still, parting is the bitter fruit of friendship sometimes. If we become accustomed to one’s companionship it is sure to leave a hole when it’s gone…

On to greener Minnasota grass. Bon voyage. We’ll miss you.

We took one last trip to Le Vignaud to say au revoir to Jeanine. Her grandson Damien was there, and he took over my camera for a while. Everyone had to try on my casquette at least once (I think Jeanine looks best in it) and Damien forced Gigi and I to pose and jump for him. Quite the photographer, he filled the memory card in about a half hour and we were left with a few gems.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Just for kicks (since that’s been the theme of the year so far), a short stop motion film for your enjoyment:

[See post to watch QuickTime movie] ]]> http://www.seekingfocus.com/levignaud/2009/07/you-aint-goin-nowhere/feed/ 3