The challenge

Feeling a little homesick for Mexican food, I made burritos the other night.  I delightedly wrapped my fingers around those corn tortillas and chuckled as Andy dropped half of his filling onto the plate.  To accompany my delicious, nostalgic meal, I made myself a Monaco.  I've discovered that grenadine, added to une bière blonde, is ambrosia.

Domaine des Palais, Ambierle, France

While I remain content, life at MonS is challenging.  My flatmate gave me an article to read about the Michelin-starred restaurant at which he worked prior to coming to France.  The author describes the environment at Number One in Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel as fast-paced, grueling and potentially hazardous.  Though hazardous comes only in heavy lifting, MonS demands a similarly fast pace that I have not encountered before.  Deadlines, I know.  Lines of customers, yes.  But the former means a healthy build-up to a finished product, provided effective work-load management.  And the latter, in my experience, means grueling within a short time frame (lunch rush, for instance).  My day at MonS is all fast-paced, all the time, and while I assume I'll become accustomed, this work environment differs drastically from my philosophy that 'it's better to do something well and slow to begin, than to do something fast and half-assed.'

I'm trying my best to learn, work fast and work well, and having completed these first three weeks, I'm not sure where I stand.  I am very happy and proud to say that I painted all of the Langres, Epoisses, and Maroilles in the celicaves (wine cases) and finished ahead of schedule last Thursday.  But on Friday, I wasted 45 minutes flipping new goat cheeses in the haloir (drying room) because I thought they were not ready to go into their aging cave, when in fact, they were ready. 

I hope that next time I write I will be able to tell you that I am totally one with affinage at MonS.  For now, I'll tell you that I'm working hard everyday to be a good affineur and I'll leave you with this passage by Paulo Coelho from The Alchemist:

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.  And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

"Every second of the search is an encounter with God," the boy told his heart.  "When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I've known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it.  When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve."

So his heart was quiet for an entire afternoon.  That night, the boy slept deeply, and, when he awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World.  It said that all people who are happy have God within them.  And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said.  Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it.  "Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him," his heart said.  "We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them.  We speak of them only to children.  Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate.  But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness.  Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

"So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly.  We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts."

Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France