Cevennes

We're back from the Cevennes, and we have a few days to gather the fruits from our holidays and store them over winter under the headings Food, Sport and Leisure and Way of Life.

If you walk up these stairs you will enter our gite, a small semi-independant section of the main farmouse with a miniscule kitchenette, dark rooms, comfortable beds and bountiful mosquitoes.  The bowl of scraps on the third steps is for the chickens.  JC's root of Consoude (Comfrey) which he collected from his medicinal herbs course in the Pyrenées, is drying on the green chair where windfall apples wait to be turned into compôte.

www.lemasperdu.com

Permission to Retreat

Strange things happen when we give ourselves permission to retreat.

When we set down our luggage we fell, like a bodiless set of clothes, we fell to the ground, we fell down. We just managed to cross the singing meadow, from the Abbaye de Rhuys to the sea.

There we lay all day, on a rock, in windproof jackets, with no desire, no strength and no plans. Once I opened my eyes and saw a lizard, like me, lying on a rock. When the tide was out, dizzy and bedazzled I walked over the rock flats with their non stick coating of barnacles, and I saw a thin brown man with white hair lying under a low cave, who said without words, do not see me.

On the second day we rose, gradually, enough to walk the coastal paths, to meet the sea plants, some of them strange. The chamomile, the honeysuckle, the blackberry blossom, Queen Anne's Lace and mallow are wild here, by the sea.

On the second day we rose enough to walk into the sea. As JC front-crawled to the horizon I settled on a rock to contemplate, but an inner command said go into the water.

Such a command, the command to LIVE, since I asked for it, could not be ignored, although I complained. I walked into the impossible cold of the water although underwear and body was baggy, and I swam.








































Strange things happen when we give ourselves permission to retreat, put everything down, abandon. The things we longed to concentrate upon we never did. Instead, other unexpected and senseless things arose, like images spread out on both sides of a cloth. Things that were important are not, instead, the importanceof a song I sang last week with love, the terrible harm of a snide thought, the possibility to heal dark things which we never imagined.

On the rocks bristle little stone figures, pilgrims lining up and going out to sea, one with its rock arm outsretched. On closer inpection the figures are nothing more than stone set upon stone. It is a mystery how they survive the tides. JC, by lying still all day long saw the thin brown man with the white hair come out and set them up again.

Garden Feature

They're lovely when they're asleep aren't they?

Poppies

Poppies planted themselves in front of our door, and one day a red faced visitor peered in at the window.

Alchemist's Kitchen

After 3 weeks of having the old kitchen in the dining area, the new kitchen in the living area and no kitchen at all in the kitchen - dust din and despair... the alchemist's kitchen is unveiled: earth fire water and air.

New kitchen in living area...

Where I put myself

I was cycling along today, watching out for my favourite blossom trees, and happy to see the ones by the Seine have burst open their first flowers, and I found myself thinking: where do I put myself? My sons travel with me on that same route along the Seine every day. Where will I be in my sons' memories? Will they find me in the blossom trees? Or in the swearing and indignation which I direct daily at my fellow drivers? Perhaps they will remember the former, and cry, and remember the latter and laugh, but I hope I put myself in some kind of heaven, and that I can be found there.

Vatican Country

We stayed at the Villa Tassoni (aparthotel) 20 minutes walk from the Vatican (smallest country in the world even smaller than Luxembourg). The Vatican museum has 2 advantages, readily available reasonably priced pizzerias serving excellent cappuccino and outdoor courtyards, meaning the whole family experienced a blissful day out at the museum alone, a veritable Banquet for the Soul, most of which I was unable to photograph because the camera battery ran out. However, we have some views from the Villa Tassoni, JC enjoying breakfast, R showing me his mandela, and reminding me that the heating was set at 29 degrees.

The only marble I was able to catch on camera was pretend marble painted on the wall.

The golden corridor of the map room, and a detail from one of the Dawn Treader type maps, showing the waves of the sea. R benefited from B's binoculars to admire the highly decorated ceiling from the prone position and JC is uplifted.