Normandy Chalk

Driving to the small down of Bois de Guillaume from Paris should only take an hour and a half. The morning drive that started for us at 10 am, ended only at 1pm. The traffic, the stress seems to evaporate as soon as our host C_ came to meet us barefoot on the driveway. She seemed to glow in a skirt with her long blond hair as she invited us in to the garden , and showed us our rooms.
This was one of those rare days in the north where the sun beat down hard onto our foreheads, slowing down our movements and making us squint across the long table at each other. We passed bread and cheese and radishes over rice salads and fresh melons. Not an overly luxurious spread, but somehow deeply french and totally delicious.
After coffee and cigarettes, we all tumbled into the car to go to Dieppe: the Brighton/ Atlantic City of Normandy. What I can only identify as french 'white trash' clash against the bo-bo weekenders. The white cliffs and pointy large rocks that lead to the beach would make the most graceful topless women walk as though severely deformed and brain damaged, until finally and thankfully plopping into the water, no matter how cold or cloudy. Swimming out a good ways and turning around to look back at the rocky gray and white beach, the fields above seemed to be held by columns of milky air rather than solid cliffs. Floating on my back the thick classic clouds of Monet and Pisarro hung above me, seeming to be made of the same chalky milky stuff as the cliffs. When the sun came everything turned into the harshest white, and I felt like I was swimming through an overexposed roll of film.
As we were leaving the next day C_ called out to us to not forgot the rocks. X had grabbed them for the beach and she told us they were actually chalk. "Go write all over paris with our normandy chalk", and handing the rocks to me, and me to X, we all were left with a thin white film on our fingertips that smelled like the sea.