A Walk with the Wood Elf: A Stroke of the Pen, the Sword, and the Swimmer

Just up the street and around the corner from our Hotel du Forum stands the imposing arena of Arles, built around 1BC to seat over 20,000 spectators on three levels. We wandered the seating area, climbed the tower, sat on the worn stone put in place 2,000 years ago by what were likely the strong hands of young conscripts, far from home and missing their families. It was hard not to feel an affinity with those kindred spirits whose labor has left this still functional structure. What have we done today that will endure?

We did meet our friend Lisette Dautry and her granddaughter Charlotte this morning. Madame Dautry came to all the Clay French classes in the fall when she was in Carmel helping out while her son's family moved. Her granddaughter is a student at Clay who has visited our classroom as well. Charlotte hopes to visit Carmel someday, so if you are looking for a French 15 year old for a month vacation, we can fix you up! Madame and Charlotte accompanied us to the arena and then to Nîmes, leaving us after lunch. It was such a pleasure to be able to reconnect, for the students to feel they were meeting a friend here, and for me.

We walked from the arena to our Ecole d'Escrime et de Calligraphie, where we began with the pen and ended with the sword. Thierry was our calligraphy teacher, a professional who uses the same inks, plumes, and paper as the medieval Latin calligraphers did. He gave us a short history of the Chinese, Arabic, and Latin calligraphy styles, then turned us loose on an alphabet and our own names. The hour of effort earned a diploma with his art writing in each name.

Our second hour taught us a different history, that of the sword, which in its earliest form was a heavy offensive weapon used by knights. The foil, rapier, and épée were lighter and became defensive weapons as well. Our instructor Quentin has the sword used by Leonardo da Caprio in the Man with the Iron Mask movie, an épée of the Mousketaires.

Short intro concluded, we swashed into our face masks and buckled into our swords and underwent the transformation into movie stars. We learned the choreographed fight move to attack the head, the right then left arm, the head, and with no real logic other than showmanship, the feet (which involved defensive jumping.) After all the pairs had leanred these basic moves, Quentin told us that we had 10 minutes to plan out our audition for him to judge the best boy and girl on their swordplay and the creative story that they invented to give it context.

We had some awesome stories: "You stole my boyfriend! (or hairbrush) Prepare to die!" "You Cathares, convert or die!" "You stole my girlfriend! Prepare to die!" "I hate you!" "I hate you more!" but the most drama involved the love triangle whose jilted bad boy (Scott) took a direct hit from his former woman with a sword before recovering enough to stagger over and thrust home the killing blow. Becca's dramatic shriek of grief as she fell to her knees over the two dead bodies won the day (but boy, did they have a great director!)

I must say that I did enjoy the 30 minute jaunt to Nîmes since I got to ride shotgun with Madame in her Peugot convertible. Wow. WOW. Top down, wind and sun, it was a delight. The bus ride to Nîmes was short and the river Gard awaited. We walked around the arena we had been intended to tour but which was closed to set up for the Coldplay concert tomorrow. Our visit to the Maison Carrée was enhanced by a 3 D movie of the centuries of heroic highlights from this place. We met the bus, gasped at the 30 degrees C. and headed for water.

There is little that is more delightful than watching youngsters in the water on a hot day, swimming, splashing, cavorting, laughing. It was a shame to get them out after a 40 minute swim. Our path to the 2000 year old aqueduct under which we swam ran past an olive tree documented to have lived since 908. There is no 1 in front of that number. Antiquity lives. Vive l'antiquité!