Ula captures the world on her i-soap

Perfect Moment
April 10, 2012
Tags: traveling with kids

At its best, travel is a patchwork of glorious moments, too perfect and rich for all the senses to be captured simply in photographs. Ula reminded me of that the other day.

We’re presently renting an apartment in a friendly, albeit admittedly gritty seaside port just outside the city of Marseille. It’s perfectly safe to go out during the day, with plenty of friendly kids and parents in the nearby playground, but the amount of broken beer bottles ground into the run-down sidewalks suggests that it might be best to be home before dark.

So we took a trip up the highway a few days ago to visit one of the well-healed seaside towns on the edge of the French Riviera, Cassis. It was beautiful, with soft, pastel buildings, seaside cafes and azure blue skies that perfectly matched the sailboat-speckled ocean. It was market day, and the village was alive with vendors selling fresh caught fish, meats, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, cured sausages, olives, brightly colored provencal tablecloths and pottery, giant bars of lavender soap, and myriad beautiful crafts. One of the vendors gave Ula a bar of homemade soap. Swept up in the glorious sights around her, she took to using it as a camera for photographing the market and surrounding village. She also received a suprising number of phone calls on it, many of them from French friends who didn’t speak English. But she didn’t let the needs of her clingy imaginary amies distract her from the sights at hand. She focused her lense on a young man with scruffy hair and a backpack who’d settled in next to the public fountain to entertain the marketgoers with a didgeridoo.

Ula chose a seat next to him and captured his playing on soap film for the remainder of the market. He was playing away in meditative bliss when a gentleman in an ironed sweatshirt and excessively shiny shoes came over with an iphone and asked him to stop playing while he made a phone call. He appeared to be some kind of market authority. The young musician politely obliged. While waiting for the call to go through, Ironed Sweatshirt proceeded to explain that playing music at the market was interdit. The young man made no arguments and sat peacefully while Ironed Sweatshirt completed his phone call, which we soon learned was to the village police. Ula had captured the officer on duty earlier on soap film, walking past, clearly unperturbed by the young musican’s presence. But pressed by Ironed Sweatshirt, he gently told the young man he needed to move along, then offered a list of places in the village where busking was permitted.

The young man nodded pleasantly, and the officer and Ironed Sweatshirt floated away. He took a leisurely sip from his water bottle, picked up his didgereedoo to blow the last of the spittle from it, and made one last glorious toot for Ula’s pleasure.

“It is necessary,” he explained to us, “so that the instrument will be clean when I put it away.”

We nodded and watched as he methodically slipped his day’s earnings into a change purse, and smiling, loaded his pack onto his back. Before he trundled off, he smiled at us again, clearly happy and unflustered by his run-in with authorities.

“Sometimes it is easier to say ‘I’m sorry’ than it is to ask permission,” I suggested as he buckled the waistband on his pack.

“Exactly,” he grinned. “All is done, and now I have played in Cassis.”

He moved on, but Ula kept photographing. After he left, she handed me the camera and struck a few poses for me to capture for posterity. I snapped away as she twirled, spinned and danced. Apparently the soap camera was also a video camera, because she began performing a song from Mamma Mia as well, to a growing appreciative audience. Not satisfied with the vocals alone, she opted to do the horn solo as well, then lifted an imaginary saxophone to her lips and began to play.

Then she stopped abruptly.

“Oh! I forgot!” She exclaimed. “Music isn’t allowed here!”

Too late. I’d captured her on the soap camera, so I had proof for the authorities.
Comments
April 11, 2012 2:47 AM EDT
glad to see my two favorite girls are running rampant across france. Enjoy the meat and cheese and people (and eat a croissant for me!
– sean
April 13, 2012 5:38 AM EDT
GREAT blog! Glad I found it. France is one of our favorite places to take our family.
– Theresa
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