28th March 2011
This morning we are transported yet again, this time, in Cezanne’s studio. It’s holy in there. I long to be him. To surrender to the light and vision and ritual and the never-ending search to articulate the inexplicable. It’s a grey day, as grey as the walls, which gives the whole experience a dream-like, floating reality. I wish we could be in there alone, even though the woman who is en garde, is engaging and obviously in love with being in this place each day, it is, nonetheless, the kind of place one would like to be solitary in. So we’ll let Joel’s photographs express this quality. Photographs, which are, by the way, forbidden to be taken – unless you are Joel Meyerowitz!
Cezanne's walking stick
His hat
The door he had cut into the wall to the garden so he could finish "The Bathers" outside in the light.
In the pamphlet there is a sentence that strikes me: “he was dying when he came back from the Garden.” He had caught pneumonia painting in the rain. I think, what a beautiful way to die. And am saddened to accept that I will not die coming back from my garden on Cape Cod.
In Cezanne’s garden I pick a single flower of myrtle and walk the paths he trod and then we leave him there and take the back road to Veauvenargues, which yields nothing. The day is mixed: broody, fast-moving skies, mainly grey; the sun, weak but trying to break through. It, like us, is looking for an opening. We look and look and remark to each other on the difficulty we’re having in seeing something that will take our breath away. We stop here and there searching. We become aware of our “need” and have to keep letting go. We have to trust that what we’re looking for will appear when we least expect it.
We continue to climb up and up into the mountains and as we round a sharp bend I glimpse a rocky ledge that calls to me. I have no idea what it is that beckons me, yet I am impelled to follow my instinct. I climb over a railing and find “my” rock. I sit and look out to the mountains and valleys, still wondering what is it about this place that makes me feel at home on the planet? I look around the little patch of land I’m on and see I am surrounded by wild thyme! The gift is right their at my feet! And indeed, I understand the larger sense of being surrounded by time. How many centuries ago was this area underwater? How long did it take for these rocks to forge themselves? How many eruptions took place? Once again we are transported.
I pick huge bunches of thyme and heartened, we travel on.
The road, a thin worn ribbon, takes us through a high plateau where once again we are called to stop. We stand in a forest of scrub oaks and marvel at their leaves, which, as tenacious as the people, have refused to fall – in spite of winter’s ferocious winds. These leaves will not budge until they are forced-out by the new tenants, whose buds are just now forming. The leaves, lit by a burst of sunlight, transport us into Autumn. And then as quickly, the sun disappears and the leaves are reduced to dry brown paper, the life gone out of them.
We are done with the day, feel the urge to return to TSL by evening, and get on the motorway, which although as soulless as any anywhere, does the job. We stop in Vence to pick up dinner-makings from the Bio and now, familiar with the road, start to feel the excitement of returning home. What joy to drive our lane, park the car, fling open the doors: to light the fire, take a bath, and make yet another delicious dinner:
For dessert, thin slices of dark, honey-almond, nougat, which resembles the land: basic, tough, sweet.
