Peyrefitte via Lourdes, entering meta-existence

Malcolm, adroit driver, first wiggled us out of the to me somewhat scary Paris traffic, then routed us southward. Through our GSMs, we fix accommodation for the night, 20 kilometers outside Bordeaux. We drive to Tours, Poitiers and Angoulême. We get lost on the massive periferique of Bordeaux. After an hour, we cross Garonne for the third time and find the bed & breakfast within half an hour. We drive away again, through vineyards, by castles, into the village of Branne. Dining, I have a menu consisting of a brilliant fish soup, then salmon, then an entrecôte with squash and frites. The dessert is chevre chaud salad, local chevre kicking ass and taking names like Ta Mok. We have a St. Emilion Grand Cru. The menu was 90 francs and the wine was - what? - 130 francs and everything was brilliant. Our young waitress was really sweet, blushing all the time.

The next day, it's first a trip to Saint Emilion for wine purchases, then it's the waves of the "A" ocean. The Bordeaux scenery is truly spectacular. The Atlantic was not very wavy, mind. No real surf to Malcolm's surfer keen knees. Water is cool but not cold. Call me mister floatation tank. I sit on the beach, reading the latest Ellroy, wearing a tee-shirt and a cap, afraid of the sun, ashamed of my pallid flesh, small muscles and my skin defects. I swim and float, riding the sorry surf. I felt great. I had forgotten how good it feels to swim in the ocean.

We go back in the evening, eating at the same place in Branne. This time, I have Salad Landaise, probably lauded by the arcane A.A.A.A.A., an organisation for amateur intestine eaters in France. The interstines was probably cock's heart and some other animal's heart. Tasted real good though. Then 7 primo oysters, a course which I have not grown accustomed to yet. The live mollusks make me queasy. Especially the really big ones, that seem to whimper and wiggle in my mouth, my teeth biting them in half, letting it all slide down my throat, causing tiny spasms in my digestive tracts. The entrecôte makes it all right again, extremely rare this time. The last course is pear and cassis sorbet. Sooooooo nice. The local wine is a little immature, but very good nevertheless.

Time to leave, this time to Malcolm's father's house in Peyrefitte Du Razes, a tiny village between Limoux and Montpellier, some 40 kilometers from Carcassonne. Cathar country, man. Now extinct, gnostic-like religion. They were all killed off by the Catholic church in a series of massacres, most famously Montajou. 500 of the Cathars were hoí katharoí, the pure ones. Dualistic theology. Admired by the vast amount of hippies who moved into the region in the '60s and still are very much present. Cathar iron designs are everywhere too.

But I digress: let me back up. We drove to Peyrefitte via Lourdes, that holy holy city of commercialism, consumerism and capitalism: all too familiar triad. 'Course, we weren't any better. Lemme tellya, bubba, that the city is Weirdo City. Everywhere you see nuns, girl scouts, boy scouts and hordes of handicapped. Cerebral paresed. Mentally handicapped. Downed. Sick of old aged. Amputated. Rolled around in wheelchairs. All of them there to get cured by the holy waters of Lourdes. I actually thought it all a bit sickening to see parents with their children, obviously viewing the birth defects as some kinda godly punishment, curable by the same cocksucker who handed out the punishment in the first case. They do not deal with the kids' disease, instead they have some futile hope of sudden recovery.

I saw something that made me happy though: a overaged rocker with family, wearing an Iron Maiden Eddie tee-shirt with the words: 1990 - Year of the Beast. In Lourdes! Way cool! I had some holy water, bought some religious kitsch: luminescent plastic madonnas. Checked out the prettier of the nuns and had some dirty thoughts, reminiscing me spanking the monkey at a Vatican lavatory in 1988. I'll burn in hell for sure. Or at least end up in the bleaker parts of heaven.

In the evening, we came closer to Malcolm's father's house. I actually started to feel a bit nervous, contemplating the prospect of meeting Malcolm's sister for the first time. Would she be a female version of Malcolm? Smart, beautiful & nice as hell. Then I'd melt, make no mistake. I felt surreal. I lived in a stream of synchronicity where everything was surreal. Raw nerve ends, busy doing nothing.