Glimpsing the Glimpse - 22 March 2011
March 22, 2011
Another sunny day! We decide to take a walk down our road and as always when on foot, time becomes us and we it. The pace and perspective allow us to see so much more than we have on our previous trips down here by car. Although there was something I saw from the car window the other day that made me gasp and I am anxious to see what it is that I responded to.
We turn a corner and there it is: the patch of pink and white daisy-like flowers, the mid-morning sun popping the petals so that they appear to levitate. The grass, above which the daisies hover, is soft and sweet, the handful of olive trees unassuming. The three stone steps leading up to this little patch of heaven. It’s so intimate and yet open to all. I pick my tree and lay beneath it. There is nowhere else I’d rather be and I realize, once again, that one doesn’t have to own something to enjoy it.
Dear friends, Maggie and I have been talking every day about the work we are doing here and the process we are involved in as we see it unfold before us. We both feel that my voice should be heard here too in terms of what is happening for me and as I sense the direction that is taking shape with the work. So you can look for my comments near the photographs; I’ll put them in a different typeface and color in order for the two voices to be separate and clear.
Spring came yesterday, and today, as if by magic, signs of it are stronger. We are on the walk down our small road and I feel the energy of growing things and my first few images seem to be cascading and flowing ones; a tumble of rosemary as big as a wall, a splash of white blossoms on a pear or almond tree, a wall shadowed and overhung with a fall of pine branches over a field of flowers, a veil of smoke from the innumerable piles of leaves burning all over Provence, and even a nylon screen shielding a garden becomes something interesting to look at as light and shadow do their part. These photographs seem to come from a new place for me, one that is organic and elemental, like the season itself.
Joel and I prudently decide to turn around and head back up the steep climb to the house – got to break in the old bods slowly here! Back at The House Of Remembrance we make a picnic of cold chicken, salami, olives, tomatoes, radish, and chunks of olive bread and eat the whole thing out on the terrace. It’s a truly gorgeous day, made for a read and a nap. I do the former, Joel the latter. The forecast for New York is snow. Refreshed we get back on the road. At the top of ours, we stop for Joel to photograph a cistern he espied yesterday and both get distracted by a patch of virulent green grass so shockingly alive beneath the still-black, winter trees.
The cistern is both magical and foreboding. That’s magic for you.What is it that I find so sinister? Is it the cement holding tank which reminds of Japan’s still-threatening nuclear disaster? The water itself looks menacing, its black depths superficially lit by the sun, so as to make the reflections of the trees even blacker.
We drive on to Vence. We have a mission: those AMAZING chocolat truffles that have wiped the praline fondant off the map. We round a bend in the road and are caught by surprise at a glimpse of the Mediterranean. The sea is just over there! ALWAYS! And yet we completely forget about it because we are living in the mountains. Mountains, sea. Winter, Spring, Verdant grass, leafless trees. These exciting juxtapositions come at us in glimpses – or apercus as the French would say. And indeed we are just getting an apercu of how this IS the terrain here: we are in a Land of Glimpses. One must remain alert to this in order to “get” this part of Provence.
Suddenly I feel enormous relief: this is what I had not been willing to see before because my expectations preceded me. These expectations we have of life become demands if we don’t let go of them. The less we get what we want, the more we demand it and the demand blinds us, literally blinkers us, so that we are unable to Glimpse The Glimpse.
To take in that which reveals itself in a moment is to experience the vista of the moment: the immeasurable expanse of now.
In Vence we buy 8 Chocolat Truffles and 4 Dark Chocolat Caramel with Fleur De Sel. Oh, God, help us. Furthermore Joel buys the specialte de la maison: a long puff pastry filled with hazelnuts and caramel. We choose a café on the sunny side of the square, order tea and commence to stuff ourselves with the recent purchases. On the corner the carousel goes merrily around. And yes, life is a caramel, I mean, carousel!
On the way back to the car we pass the little bio store we shopped in yesterday. The shop sign says “ La Vie." Next door is the funeral parlor.
Home again we heat up the old soup, light the fire and the candles and talk about the day. The hand is more than holding steady – it’s growing new skin. The living and the work we did today are fulfilling. The Cape house begins to slip away and we realize that we are not only making a book together, but we are getting what is our hearts’ desire more and more of the time: to be together:
WE CAME AWAY
TO BE TOGETHER