Voulez vous du l'eau?

I had a very pleasant, relaxing day yesterday. I worked on my novel and helped Roger all afternoon in his vineyard. When the sun started to disappear behind the hill behind my house, Roger offered to get out his tractor and trailer so that we could haul the faggots I had made over to our moulin. Now I have a shed full of faggots which means I’ll be doing a lot of duck barbecuing this summer.

While cutting the vines from their wires, and stacking the faggots, I was thinking about how perfect my life meshes with my personality. I’m not lacking for anything material or spiritual. I was amused to think that when I started out “planning” my life, when I was in my teens, trying to follow the dictates of society, I pursued the absolute wrong path. I had no idea what would really make me happy. A lot of trial and error, and a great deal of luck brought me to this happy spot – nothing I learned through the educational system, from the church, or from the government showed me the way.

If you would have told my nineteen-year-old self, that when I was forty-six I would derive immense pleasure from spending the afternoon with a seventy-six year old French farmer stacking sticks, I would have thought you were insane. And perhaps you question my sanity for thinking that such an afternoon is as close to heaven as one can get on this earth.

But I cannot say it enough -- the simple things are what matter -- health, family, friends, a few cuddly sheep, good food and a little wine. That is all we require. Well, perhaps some garnishes of literature, art, and music as well.

So knowing this, why do we spend our days racing around like cockroaches exposed to light, pursuing the absolute antitheses to happiness?

I’ll tell you why. Because we receive things like the 1600 Euro water bill that arrived in the mail yesterday. So this afternoon, instead of scampering about the vineyard, breathing in the sweet French air of liberte, egalite, fraternite, I will be driving to the water office to try and decipher what the @#%* is going on – choking on my frustration with bureaucrate, fonctionnaire, coliere. (Please add your own accents.)