In Provence, they don't like the dark mess of the old so much. They like bright colors and lovely fabric. The contractor explained to me very slowly in French that here, in Provence, we don't want this old dark wood and poorly tuck pointed (he didn't use that expression, I could not have understood it anyway) stone. We need to remove the old concrete or whatever it is and replace it with something new and smooth. We'll let the old stones show through a bit but we'll get rid of the trail of fingers that put the concrete between the stones. We need to cover the old beams, puitres (poot-tra) they are called, with a nice blue paint, something warm or bright and provencal. I understand I say, though I don't. I love the old beams and I love the fingerprints in whatever is holding the stones in place.
Foued, one of the workers, listened to the contractor, his boss, nodding his head in agreement. I told Pavel, the contractor, outright that I liked it the way it was but that, of course, I am not from here and am open to his ideas. I had just arrived, seriously dead tired. I couldn't possibly understand. I know that. Though I also know, I'm not French, I'm not from Provence, I will never understand. He immediately took me to his house just a twisty block away. I can tell you that his home is absolutely, gloriously, fabulously beautiful. He has taken a small couple of rooms in a very old place and made it into a sanctuary. Arid gardens, glassed in terraces and stairways that wind up into a pinnacle room cut into the very rock of this hill that overlooks this city. An original porch apparently made of the same wood as my ceiling, is painted green surrounds the top floor. Without reservation I can say it is something I would live in and be happy for the rest of my life. The kitchen is painted yellow-orange in a louche, swirly way like the walls in my apartment. Like pictures in magazines I have recently looked at. In fact, all the walls in every room are painted like that. Loopy messy swirly paint jobs, bright colors emulating in some vague way the way old walls look when they have been painted and repainted and replastered and repainted. It's a trend. Making what is not old look old, only not really, just a vague semblence of what that old is supposed to look like. Except that the idea is lost here. No one seems to understand that what they are doing is trying to make things look old, it's just a new style that's gotten disconnected from its roots.
