A woman with a suitcase, dressed in a wildly flirtatious French style, visited with a six year old boy taking his vacation in Paris.  He was with his mother and her friend, a deaf black man.  "I am a chatterbox," the boy coyly admits, and spills the beans about his town, his home, his life to the delight of everyone on the bus.  The mature traveler, with her oft-resoled shoes, had the air of a Mata Hari of the kindergarten.

Later in the week, we received a call from a friend in Guethary, just south of Biarritz.  "If you can get ten or so paintings down here by Friday night, you can be in a show!"  We shot off some bio information for the newspaper,a and rented a car.  We left Friday morning with our best "Basque Country" paintings.

There are times a car trip suits us.  We brought grapes and pears, paper and pencil, and Christmas music (it is the only kind I am ever inspired to buy) for the CD player.  To the strains of the Blind Boys of Alabama singing "Joy to the World", we develop new ideas for life.

Bicycles are strapped to the back of gas guzzlers leaving Paris.  We head toward Poitiers, where "Futurscope", France's Epcot Center, is located.   It is a dogged trip until then, when we make the turn toward Bordeaux.  The road is lined with fields of sunflowers and grapes.  We cross the muddy Gironde and its sister river, the Garonne.  The landscape gives way to tall skinny pine trees in fields of ferns.  We see signs for Bayonne, home of the famous ham, and this weekend, the festival and bullfight.  An animal-rights billboard, with a dying bull, welcomes the revelers.  We press on past Biarritz, to our destination.

At five o'clock we arrive, and head for the beach.  The Atlantic waters are warmer than the lake we were swimming in, in July.  I float like a cork.  Surfers paddle by to catch the enormous waves, further out.

We hung our show, and ate by the seashore.  We slept at the very brink of the sea, in our friends apartment.  Built in the 1920s, the building is like a boat, with oval windows and balcony rails.

We swam three times before we had to get back into the car to head for home.  We are off to London on Tuesday.  We concoct new ideas of how to sell our paintings, and make a living, knowing there will be no one at the office until September.

In the deserted Paris street, I watch two street cleaning vehicles make dance-like maneuvers:  one driver is handing another a cigarette lighter.  In just a month, that road will be packed with cars headed back to work.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
"Palm in the Luxembourg Garden" acrylic on panel, 10 x 13 inches