Bits and pieces to clear out before we go home Saturday morning....
Saturday, June 6, 2015
If you removed cars from three quarters of the dooryards
around here, you wouldn’t know what century it was. This place is infused with,
suffused with, steeped in, drenched in, enveloped in time in a way totally
different from my experience of the states. Being bone idle also promotes musing. There’s not much news.
We continue living in a beautiful landscape, eating the food it provides
and sleeping to the sounds of its night birds. JP is working inside today. He has painted a
few foreground wheat stalks and is putting the color into the poppies; WAIT! he’s
signed it! Wine!
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
We hung out in St. Antonin yesterday across the river from
the town and church so that JP could fulfill a lifelong dream and set up an easel on the banks of the Seine and paint. Different river but still France.
He had found a yellow-green chaise for me to lounge about
in. After some of that I clambered up 78
steps in the side of the hill thinking I was going to see a view, but found a
cemetery. I have a picture. Burials seem very heavy, very concrete and very
permanent. There is not a glimmer of the ineffable. In another direction I found a bright cold
supermarket, the most modern we’ve run across, where I got replacement sea
salt, pepper in a grinder, ground coffee and Earl Gray Tea. And a can of Exceedingly
Cold Dutch Beer! I lugged that back into the French Painting under the pollarded trees with the subtly dappled
light on the banks of the gently flowing green Aveyron, Then sat in my garish plastic chaise, read my Spenser mystery
aloud and swilled the beer. Ugly
American but so pleasant. Actually, numbers of people came over to look and we conversed quite happily. A strong grounding in charades helped.
There is very little litter along the roads. It makes a
difference in the pleasure of the driving. There are also very few fat people.
I haven’t seen one fat kid the whole time. Maybe because the bread crusts and
the sausage are so tough it takes longer to eat. People around here must have
very strong teeth too. And the hills are full of bicyclists with white hair and lined faces.
The landscape here is changing. The wheatfields that were
green when we came are now the blond of a 6 year old in the summer. The deep red brick fields are starting to turn green as the
sunflowers grow. The cut hay fields are a patchy scraped yellow brown. The red roses are climbing up the ivy below
our second floor windows and the ivy itself is growing into the house. There are pink
roses lower down with a heavenly fragrance and the bees and bugs and birds are sounding
happy happy happy.
Thursday, June 11 We are running out of trash to read. I thought I would be
forced to get into the Granta Book of the American Short Story with “…a
selection from the best works of American short fiction published in the last
fifty years.” 1992 . I avoid short stories; I never read them in
The New Yorker because they are dismal and tiresome but we were desperate. Then I saw the following
endorsement on the back cover: “What links most of the stories in this
collection is a sense of indefinable disquiet, gathering unease, growing
anxiety, incipient panic, imminent crises- things turning menacing,
insignificant lives beginning to fracture…
This is a rich collection.” Tony Tanner, Guardian
I rest my
case! And here’s an Eric Ambler that fell
behind the bookcase. Another great thing about mysteries before 1985. NO
COMPUTERS!!!!!!
Christmas Carol line. “ The cherry tree bowed low down,
bowed low down to the ground. And Mary gathered cherries while Joseph stood
around…” That’s exactly it! The cherries
in the next garden are ripe and the branches are bowed down with their weight.
You just extend your hand straight out and they rest in your palm. Good too.
