2005-03-30 - 9:35 p.m.
What a difference the good weather makes! Spring is here with a clear blue sky, hot sun, and the air filled with the fragrance of spring flowers. I've been driving around with all four windows down and the air conditioning off, and with those windows being so big it almost feels like I am in convertible! I nearly made the mistake of acting all fraternal with a biker who was stopped next to me at a traffic light--I was used to them being friendly when I had a convertible, "brothers of the open air," so to speak, which would have made no sense with me being in a hardtop Cadillac sedan.
On Easter Sunday I had a yen to go see Paramount Ranch once again, which is also a state park. I wanted to hike around in the green-grassy meadows of the Santa Monica Mountains and that seemed like a good place to go do it.
I hadn't been there since I had been a week-long extra on Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman, which used to be filmed there. What a difference it makes, though, having that show be gone. Not only was the old western town virtually empty (which I expected), not a commotion of horses, lighting trucks, dressing room trailers, food craft services vehicles, cameras, crew, actors, and the like, but also the western town, itself, had many fewer buildings (which I hadn't expected). Apparently for the show many more buildings had been built, such as a couple of barns, a church out in the meadow, and a whole squatters village (where I had been for the filming I was in), and other sections of the town. I was surprised to see none of that there--even if they had been specially built for the show, I would have figured that those buildings would have been worth retaining.
There were many visitors, though, mostly enjoying picnics, and lots of dogs. Perhaps it is rare for state parks to be so dog friendly, because it seemed that everyone there except for me had a dog or several dogs with them.
Because of all the rain we have had, everything was lush and green, and there was a full, delicious creek flowing through. I would have liked to have gotten in that water, it looked so refreshing.
I went for a hike up a narrow trail that threaded its way uphill through the tall, thick grass, but my progress was cut short by a long rattlesnake I saw slinking its way across the path a couple of yards up ahead. I wasn't afraid of it, it was pretty fascinating, really, the way it moved so smoothly and in a perfectly straight line, almost magic, really, as I can't understand just how they are able to move. I wasn't close enough for it to be disturbed by me, its rattle wasn't shaking, but its bony whiteness merely following along behind like a caboose. And not disturbing it was the way I liked it.
I figured it was a good time to turn back. I had no idea how many other snakes there were like that in the grass that I might disturb, and I didn't think a rattlesnake bite would make for a good Easter Sunday.
Later that evening, I enjoyed a Netflix DVD that had arrived on Friday. Continuing with my particular love for French films, it was L'Enfant sauvage ("The Wild Child"), a 1970 film by Francois Truffaut, who also played a lead role in it (the doctor). This is about the true story of a boy in the 1700s who had been stabbed in the throat and left to die in the French woods, but the wound healed and he managed to survive on his own without human contact until, when he was about eight years old, some hunters and their dogs found him, captured him, and ended up taking him to their village. Unable to do anything with him as he was just like a wild animal, they ended up turning him over to a doctor who took him into his home to see if he could civilize and educate him.
I just loved it! The film really was so sweetly done with a level of love that we don�t see too much of, today. And since I am now taking French lessons (something I'll talk about a bit later), it was especially fun to instantly recognize a few words of the French dialogue, as I know them now!
The boy who played the wild child, Jean-Pierre Cargol, was an amazing performer. Gee, is every French actor outstanding? I am beginning to think so.
If I had had the assignment to perform as a wild boy, or, alternatively, direct one in such actions, I don�t think I would have known how to do it anywhere near as well as this boy did. He continued to surprise me with his choices in how to perform, and yet his performance seemed to make so much sense. Actually, he kept reminding me of my dog, Angel (which means he really got the "animal" down cold), and it might have been the actions of dogs that had given him his inspiration. But then, as he got more and more indoctrinated into the behaviors of human society, he brilliantly mutated his actions to show an ever-increasing emergence of humanity from within him.
For example, one of the things he would do would be to take the doctor�s hand in his and repeatedly place the doctor�s palm in spot after spot all over his face and head. The doctor explained, �This is his way of talking,� but I viewed it as a way of demonstrating that he understood that he and the doctor shared a fundamental similar being, and that he enjoyed receiving affection from the doctor. But at the same time, it was also like a dog indicating that it wanted to be pet.
Two things the boy particularly loved, were going for walks in the woods with the doctor and receiving a cup of milk from the wife of a friend of the doctor at whose estate they would often go visit. He had an almost essential craving for the outdoors, the habitat that he grew up in, and whenever there was a full moon or a heavy rain, he would go outside and, overcome with excitement and joy, would bound all over the place, soaking up this enhanced natural atmosphere (it makes me realize how cruel it is to keep an animal in the zoo). His actions of demonstrating his desire for the walks was almost like a dog bringing his master the leash, and whenever he would arrive at the house of the doctor�s friend, he would bang on the door of the cupboard where the milk was kept (until he learned how to turn the key and open it for himself).
The boy�s actions were cute and almost humorous, such as in his struggle with having to master the use of a soup spoon at the table, after several frustrating attempts, he suddenly just gave up and put his whole head down into the soup bowl.
Perhaps most precious of all was what he would do during his arduous lessons at being taught how to recognize the names of objects or place the letters of the alphabet in the correct order. When he reached his limit, he would suddenly just throw himself down supine onto the floor, kind of like a tantrum, but also as if he simply couldn�t bear standing upright anymore. All these actions resulted in me quite falling in love with him�he was so vulnerable and real.
There was one scene that, to me, was quite heartbreaking. The doctor had developed a system of rewards and punishments for the boy�s lessons. Whenever he performed his ever-more-complicated task correctly, he was given a drink of water (which seemed to be a reward the boy never stopped wanting), but when he failed, he was shut up in a dark closet for a while. But this time, the doctor wanted to test the boy�s sense of justice, or what the doctor referred to as his �moral� development, so when the boy performed the next complicated task, and proudly produced the correct result, the doctor pretended to be very angry and grabbed him to stuff him into the punishment closet. The shock of this injustice and the boy�s adamant confusion and misery demonstrated that he very definitely had a developed sense of justice and instantly turned back into a wild animal again, rejecting all of the civilizing influence that had been forced upon him. The doctor tried to hug the boy and apologize for this and explain what he had been trying to do (which the boy couldn�t understand). I was so miserable with this that I would have wanted to hug and caress the boy all night in an effort to make up for it.
However, this was enough of a shock for the boy to run away and go back into the wild woods again. However, he later did return and it was obvious that the pull of the desire for human society and affection was now too strong of a magnet. Happily the doctor welcomed him back, but announced (almost sadly and profoundly) that there were going to be even more lessons�the price one has to pay for being civilized.
The boy wasn�t the only precious character in the movie. I also loved the housekeeper who provided a motherly influence; she was tireless in her caring for the boy. Also, the doctor�s friend who had the estate was a most generous man, allowing the wild boy to have practically a free run of the estate. And there was one scene with him that I loved. The man�s little son had shown the wild boy how they could give each other rides in the wheelbarrow. But one day the son wasn�t there, so the wild boy interrupted a board game that the doctor and his friend were playing, to lead him outside to the wheelbarrow. The boy indicated that he wanted the man to give him a ride, which the man did, running as fast as he could back and forth and all around in an effort to give the boy as good of a ride as possible. His sweet generosity with the boy reminded me of similar actions on the part of the nobleman�s man-servant in the movie, My Mother�s Castle, who would put Marcel�s little brother up onto his shoulders and would gallop with him all around the garden, playing horsey and making appropriate horse noises for the boy�s amusement.
These French�what can I say, I just love �em!
I love them so much, I decided I wanted to learn the language. One of the things I enjoy about French films is hearing how the language sounds and I feel that it would be delightful to be able to say it and to pronounce it properly myself.
Since I spend at least an hour and half, maybe more, in my car each commuting day, I figured it would be good to join Recorded Books Unlimited, which operates much in the same way that Netflix does for movies on DVD. You pay a monthly fee and you can have out three unabridged audio books at a time and maintain a �queue� of books that you want sent to you as soon as one of the three books is sent back�this way, you can have a constant stream of books to listen to.
I noticed that among their audio offerings was the Pimsleur Foreign Language series, which is designed to have you effortlessly learn a language through a process of repeatedly listening to and repeating words and phrases that step by step build up on themselves as the series progresses. So I put the French course in my queue and currently have French I, Unit A (there are three levels of French in all, each with a Unit A and B). I have felt that I am not particularly good at learning foreign languages, but this method seems to work as well as it was said to. I am amazed at how well the words and phrases get drilled into me, and when on the tape I am asked to say something, I find myself saying it correctly without even thinking about it. I can�t quite explain it, but it sure does work! In fact, I can hardly stop saying French, while I am shopping in the grocery store or am at work, as phrases such as �Je ne comprend pas l�Fraicais, Mademoiselle� just roll off my tongue. I get particularly confused when interacting with a Spanish speaker, because I have been so used to not being able to communicate with them, and now suddenly I think I can, when, of course, I cannot, because I am learning French, not Spanish!
Each lesson, which is one side of an audio cassette, is approximately half an hour, which I think is the perfect amount of time before I get exhausted like the wild boy and want to throw myself on the ground! So I do only one of them a day, and for the rest of the commute, I listen to whatever other audio book I have�so in this way I get to do both, learn French, and also enjoy other audio books on my long drives. Who knows, maybe by the time I get to France next summer, I�ll be able to speak the language fluently. Won�t that be nice!
So far, now, I�ve heard three wonderful books: Aristotle�s Children (about the rediscovery of Artistotle�s writings in Moslem Spain and the efforts of the Catholic Church to integrate and reconcile Aristotle�s science and reason into and with the church doctrine of faith, something that hasn�t yet been achieved), Captain�s Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (about a spoiled rich boy who falls overboard from an ocean liner and is rescued by a Massachusetts fishing boat, but has to stay on the boat and work with the fisherman for the entire fishing season before he can get back to land, and in so doing, becomes a humble, but skilled, self-reliant man), and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl (which I had actually never read, despite the fact that it seems practically everybody else had to read it in school). All three books have amazed and enlightened me.
Currently, along with the French course, I am listening to Honey, Mud, Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels: The Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives� Tales and it, too, is thoroughly enlightening.
Today I finally treated myself to the bike ride on the bike path at the beach I had been promising myself. I haven�t been on a bicycle in about ten years, and never on a mountain bike, which is what they rented at Venice Beach, but I liked it a lot and plan to continue to do that periodically (or, I may just buy a bicycle of my own). Although the bike wasn�t exactly big enough for me, I was still able to ride it easily and got some good exercise out of it. I love those new (new to me) easy-to-change gear shifts on the handle bars which one can manipulate with their thumbs�I always hated those racing bike derailleurs that were down low on the frame�also, I never liked those ram-horn, down-slung handle bars, but the upright mountain bike handle bars suit me much better.
I really need to increase my activity level dramatically, and while I enjoy walking, it�s quite time-consuming; an hour a day is something that I fight. Riding a bike, though, especially if it is used as an adjunct to actual transportation, is a lot more practical. However, so far, I�m not in good enough shape to use a bicycle for transportation to anywhere other than, perhaps, the nearby Mayfair Market (to which I often walk), but I could improve and that would be good. I read an article on the Internet by a woman from Canada who toured most of L.A. on a bicycle�that was pretty amazing!
Today at the beach rental kiosk, there was a woman and her two kids, a shy high-school-age girl and a very enthusiastic middle-school-age boy. They were discussing what to get�the boy wanted roller blades and the two women wanted bicycles. What I liked about them was that they were speaking French! Even though I already knew what I wanted, I let them go ahead of me because they had been there before me. Besides, I liked them on sight, and hearing!
There was some communication problem for them and I craved to help them, but they and the clerk at the kiosk managed to make do. However, I couldn�t help myself, I had to say something�since the boy was more outward focused and less shy than the two women, I asked him if he were French, �Es que vous ette Francais?� (I�m sure how to say it, not write it) and immediately he responded exactly like on my language tapes, �Mais oui.� That was my very first time actually saying something French to a native French speaker, and he understood me exactly! Also, since how you say �French� to a male is different than to a female (for females, you pronounce the �s� or �z� sound at the end, for a male, you don�t), I was pleased that neither female even turned around, but the male responded.
However, then I was in trouble, because I had very few conversational skills after that! I laughed and said to the boy, �But that�s just about all I know!� (although I could have asked them how they were, or whether they understood English, or what the name of the street was we were on, but I figured I ought to quit while I was ahead). Anyway, despite being a very tiny start, it was a start. Made me happy, anyway�but they just continued with the business of getting their bicycles and roller blades and then I got my bicycle and rode off down the bike path.
It was a marvelous day out there and everybody was having a good time, smiling at each other as we all passed each other. And such a profusion of self-powered vehicles�mountain bikes, street bikes, tandem bikes, recumbent bicycles, roller blades, skate boards, and baby strollers. I rode down the bike path to Santa Monica (which really wasn�t very far) and then came back and returned the bicycle�but was almost not able to walk afterwards! As I said, I�m not in very good shape right now, but I will improve. I already want to go back there tomorrow, but I�ll mix it up with hiking, and maybe swimming if the public pool at Griffith Park is open. If the weather�s nice tomorrow like it was today, I think I�ll hike the trail up Mount Hollywood behind the Griffith Park Observatory. That won�t be too strenuous (it�s really a hill, not a mountain), but it does feel like being out in the wilds rather than in the middle of a huge city.
Au revoir!
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