COLLABORATING WITH THE UNKNOWN - A Field of Bunnies dancing on the head of a pin.

Derek Kinzett - Chicken Wire Sculpture - Inner Spirit Collection

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.  Marcel Proust

I'd been watching the corn grow and the sunflowers do their thing while the summer got stranger and stranger.  I felt like Alice wandering in circles inside a box. I made the mistake of looking too often at a computer monitor instead of thru a Looking Glass.  And found myself staring at wildfires and planes falling from the sky; listening to the interminable Obama bashing; Wall Street's Bulls/Bears charging & growling, and a plethora of kidnappings followed by more Drone attacks.

In France the little sweet that comes along with an espresso disappeared overnight, as if every bistro and cafe had suddenly called for a cookie embargo.

Three tarot events in a row were cancelled due to rain, rain, rain...

Pluie Pluie Pluie - Chateau de Charras

Then I found a lump on my neck: OOPS &?!^+ @#$%^!&*. I began shrinking rapidly until my shoulders were nowhere to be found. I felt suspended between Yesterday and Tomorrow, while Today ceased to exist. All my consternation about the world...all my big talk about "living in the present".  I just wanted to go back in time: pre-lump, when I was complaining about the lack of cookies and the crap weather.

It finally stopped raining for a nano-second, so I jumped on Antennae II, my trusty bike, and took off on the path between confusion and conviction -  the road less traveled -  which is so easy to find in rural France. 

On the way to Les Graulges

I spun-pedaled past hectares of cornfields, sunflowers & chickens studiously pecking away behind chicken wire enclosures, Jacquie's photogenic duck in his cozy hand-hewn kingdom

Jacquie's Duck

All the chicken wire reminded me of these photos I came across of Parisian artist Benedetto Bufalino's repurposed 1970's police car, turned into a fully functioning chicken coop (La Voiture de Police Poulailler). The only difference between cops & coops is one little "o".

Benedetto Bufalino

The joke here is that the French call cops "les poules" (chickens). A little less derogatory than our American "pigs", but still...

Luxury digs for Les Poules

A queue of curious cows reminded me of another piece from Stephanie Marlis's "Fine":

Country Cows

Queue - a line of waiting people or vehicles, from the Old French cue, tail - and what about polymory? You have your string of hearts albeit stretched out over time.  And hasn't each preceding love, bright or faint, enriched the next? Is Pluto any less dear now that we know it's not a single planet but simply the largest of sixty-odd ice and rock cometlike objects?  - Stephanie Marlis

Derek Kinzett - Chicken Wire Sculpture

I kept pedaling deeper into the paysage, across les champs, down overgrown forestry roads, the ones that are posted:  Chasse Gardée - private hunting ground.  But I'm not hunting for mushrooms or sanglier; I'm hunting for the world beyond human control, the invisible world. I thought maybe if I kept shrinking like Alice or became transparent like these ghostly Kinzett sculptures I could slip thru the veil...
 
I'm searching for answers to questions raised by Thomas Aquinas's riff in "Summa Theologica" like "how many angels are dancing on the heads of pins?"  Perhaps there are simply no answers to settle those kinds of thorny "double theory" debates, the ones that masticate and circle endlessly around faith & reason. And what kind of dance? Hip hop, ballet, tango, polka, waltz? And what size are the angels? Are they ethnically diverse?

                   

My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels dance on the head of a pin.

Anne Sexton

The thing I like about the angel/head/pin debate is that Aquinas wasn't questioning the existence of angels.  Delving a little deeper into dusty archives, I found out it wasn't even a pin they were dancing on.  It was a "needle."  In 1648 William Chillingworth wrote of clergymen disputing, "Whether a million of angels may not sit upon a needle's point,” which in turn may refer to Swester Katrei's, fourteenth century German mystical work, in which a character observes, "doctors declare that in heaven a thousand angels can stand on the point of a needle." Dance, sit, stand, needle, pin?  Tell that to the poets - Ouch!

Count the Angels

A Birmingham man, Graham Short, carved the Lord's Prayer onto the head of a pin.  If a human being can do that, imagine what an angel could do if she (or he) put some toe shoes on?

Graham Short's Lord's Prayer Engraving - MailOnline

We'll get to the bottom of this later. 

After approximately 12 kilometres, I wound my way into Les Graulges, a commune (population 80), with a Romanesque church (of course), a Maire, and a telephone booth.

Working Phone Booth - Les Graulges

I couldn't imagine it worked, although it was a mere 6 or 7 years ago when Kev & I immigrated to France, and we were still using phone cards in these booths, now an anachronism.  I gingerly picked up the receiver & found mold growing under it, but then I dialed les "poules" and huppé! it worked.  Of course it does, because most of the older French who populate these communes and villages do not have cell phones.  

Les Graulgians best be en garde - Since  2007 Buffalino and lighting designer Benoit Deseille have been turning these booths into Aquariums in places like Biarritz, France and Gent, Belgium.

Evasion Urbaine - Bufalino, Deseille

Aquarium Booth

What if you wanted to call Jacques Cousteau?  I guess he's not under water anymore, perhaps in the clouds dancing on the head of a pin?

But there's more to Les Graulges then first meets the eye.  A narrow road flanked with poplar trees and high stone walls beckons. 

Antennae II chills while I investigate

The road leads to the river Lizonne, bordering the southern end of Les Graulges & a community garden, a chair to sit in. There are caves and campgrounds.

Les Graulges - Cave

It's not easy to get to the river, but I find a way to slip thru a fence and crawl down to the bank.

Les Graulges - Lizonne River

Derek Kinzett - Faerie

A sense of reverence slips in here with the riffling river music and the soft breeze nuzzling the willows and the leaves.  Recently, I was listening to some passages from priest/poet John O'Donohue's Celtic Wisdom collection, and I'm happy to report that he believed in angels, especially the guardian kind - said we've all been assigned our very own.  He also said that instead of seeking out the supernatural or flapping about in search of the ecstatic/exotic, we'd be better off looking for the divine in the ordinary.

It's not as though magic doesn't exist- we tarot practitioners are big on magic - but maybe sometimes what we think of as magic is simply awareness and attention.  It's funny how important these distinctions have become since the "lump" showed up.  Turning from the desire to escape or get "high", now seeing what is in front of me creates an expansive & holy space. My heart is not exiled. I feel a sense of belonging within this cathedral of nature.  Annie Dillard says it so well in her poem based on Vincent Van Gogh's letters:      "I Am Trying to Get at Something Utterly Heart-Broken" - A few passages below:

At the end of the road is a small cottage,

and over it all the blue sky.

I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken.

The flying birds, the smoking chimneys,

and that figure loitering below in the yard--

If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we learn?

A patch of brown heath through which a white

Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged,

Yet somewhat passionately brushed.

We who try our best to live, why do we not live more?

The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire.

It may be true that there is no God here,

But there must be one not far off...

...What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath.

If we are tired, isn't it because

We have already walked a long way? ...

A ploughed field with clods of violet earth;

Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.

So there is every moment something that moves one intensely...

I love so much, so very much, the effect

Of yellow leaves against green trunks.

This is not a thing that I have sought,

But it has come across my path and I have seized it.

                                                                       - Annie Dillard


And so I too have seized this moment to look around me.  Into the marvelous I've ridden and discovered cultural treasures in a quiet little commune.  Paul Woodruff says in his book, "Renewing a Forgotten Virtue": 

"You need not believe in God to be reverent, but to develop an occasion for reverence you must share a culture with others, and this must support a degree of ceremony."  Reverence in classical Greek society then motivated the populous to act rightly and be humble to improve society. "We feel awe for what we believe is above us all as human beings, and this feeling helps us to avoid treating other human beings with contempt."

Ed Ruscha Rabbit - 1986

But what about those "bunnies" I promised you??  When I first pedaled down the narrow road with the stone walls I saw a rabbit dashing into a large hole right in front of my eyes. Off to my left, in a large field, several pairs of ears flashed by.  But at twilight as I headed home I looked again and the same field was chock full of bunnies.  At first I thought maybe they were domesticated (you know like the lapins they sell in the markets).  But I could see they were wild and there were no fences.  I jammed to get my camera going & set up a shot, but as soon as I zeroed in they leaped & scattered into the undergrowth as rabbits will do, so I only captured a few stragglers,...I swear there were dozens, though I know it sounds like a fish tale. 

Les Graulges field - Three Slow Bunnies

       

Temptation of Eve - Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, England

This is how it really looked

Mary Baxter - Wire Rabbit Sculpture

But then it was time to leave the river, the caves, the bunnies, the gardens, the church & the community of Les Graulges. Next week in the Open Pavilion where they have held Foires for almost a hundred years, there will be an Indonesian night - Ikan balls, Gado Gado, and fried bananas.  I'll come back for that & bring some friends to share a meal and watch the angels dancing with the bunnies in the lush green fields. 

End of Day, Leaving Les Graulges

Les Graulges Cimetière

 A TRUE STORY

When I was a child

I lived in a chicken coop

in a cornfield in Illinois

with my mother, father,

two brothers and "dog".

I hated the smells and how

the feathers floated up my nose,

and the way the ceiling

hit my Dad's head

whenever he stood up straight.

And if anyone was looking for me

I hid in the slaughter room

behind the chickens

and read and read and read.

And here I am now

living among old stones

in rural France

eating roasted chickens from the market

and reading and reading and reading

Tarot. 

Heart+Child+Sun - Lenormand Revolution- Carrie Paris & Roz Foster

 Don't forget the SuperMoon tonight.  It should be a doozy!


Bonus Section for those who want to conduct a scientific experiment to see how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  This experiment comes courtesy of Orange Julius at Everything2.com.

What was once just a rhetorical illustration to demonstrate the futility of out of the touch theological debates is now an exciting scientific experiment you can conduct in your very own home.

What you will need: 

Pencil & paper
One Pin
A large number of Angels
Note:  Seraphim and Cherubim 
most desirable, but almost any angels
will do.  The garden Anaheim variety of
angel should be avoided. 
One copy of "The Song that Doesn't End"
(Extended Version.)

Instructions:  Insert the pin upright into a sturdy surface such as a pin cushion or a Styrofoam block.  Begin playing the song that doesn't end and instruct the angels to step onto the pin and begin dancing. Count each angel, stopping only when no more angels can dance on the pin, and remembering to make sure that all the angels are dancing on the pin and not just hovering above it, so as to avoid a potential source of error.  Repeat several times, removing all angels from the pin after each trial. From these trials determine the average number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Additional Exercises:

Procure a copy of  Maurice Duruflé's, "Ubi Cantas et Amor" and repeat the experiment.  Discuss the effect that music religious in nature has on your results. 

Does the type of dancing affect the number of angels who can dance? Experiment with such dancing styles as the Foxtrot, the Electric Slide and the Clueless Male Arm Flail.

Discuss possible sources of error, such as pin imbalance, drunken angels who keep falling off the pin's head, or angels who won't dance if they don't know the song. 

  
                                                                              

BASTILLE DAY - Fête nationale - Le Quatorze Juillet

FRANCE BANS ALL GMO CORN - Le Connexion, June 2014 - Vive La France!

Corn & Sunflowers - Charras, Fr.

This year the farmers planted loads of corn & wheat across from sunflowers, adjacent to sunflowers.  Some of the sunflowers échappé (escaped), hiding in the corn and wheatfields.  

And here is my friend, Madame S. from Le Pontillou.  We are looking for two of her chickens who also "escaped".  I asked her if she thought her chickens were as stupid as most people say, & she said:  "Mais non! ils savent qui les nourrit." (But no! they know who feeds them)   Ahhh, If only we humanoids were as intelligent.  

Madame S

Moth on Clover

We have such grand designs - an apron full of plans...how fine to be a moth simply extracting some nectar from a clover plant. 

How to Be Happy

Another Memo to Myself

You start with your own body

then move outward, but not too far.

Never try to please a city, for example.

Nor will the easy intimacy 

in small towns ever satisfy that need

you have only whispered in the dark.

A woman is a beginning.

She need not be pretty, but must know

how to make her own ceilings

out of all that is beautiful in her.

Together you must love to exchange

gifts in the night, and agree

on the superfluity of ribbons,

the fine violence of breaking out

of yourselves.  No matter,

it's doubtful she will be enough for you,

or you for her.  You must have friends

of both sexes.  When you get together

you must feel everyone has brought 

his fierce privacy with him 

and is ready to share it. Prepare

yourself though to keep something back;

there's a center in you 

you are simply a comedian

without.  Beyond this, it's advisable

to have a skill.  Learn how to make something;

food, a shoe box, a good day.

Remember, finally, there are few pleasures

that aren't as local as your fingertips.

Never go to Europe for a cathedral.

In large groups, create a corner

in the middle of the room.

          Stephen Dunn

THE CRUCIBLE OF MEMORY - Gesture to the Infinite & A Chagallian Moon

Champignonnière (Mushroom bed) from D M I spectacles -  Michala Marcus, Odille Pellissier, Charente, Fr.

Vidéodanse - Eglise de Rauzet*

ALERT:  Tonight, another full MOON - it always brings a soupçon of madness...


"I am out to induce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always
motivated by pictorial reasoning, that is to say a fourth dimension." -  Marc Chagall

"Waters of Life" - Painting by Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

"Most people consider Marc Chagall a painter.  He was in fact a human transistor. His brush on the canvas completed a circuit that began in his soul, traveled through a mysterious cobalt otherworld, zigged across his mind and zagged into our reality plane. The unusual frequency Chagall tuned in is timeless. His floating farmers, loving brides, flying fish, fiddle playing goats and vignettes of shtetl life long ago cover the mind like a nighttime January snowfall - quietly...steadily...gently."  - Jaime Martorano, Photographer, Digital Artist - Triphoney.com

He Had a Lifelong Taste for Flying

                                       

                                      ...figures

more often lovers than beggars

sometimes peasants:  here a woman

floats in the night sky above a Russian town,

head and body myseriously separate.

A workman falls through a fractured sky

dangles below a parachute that looks

like a handkerchief folded into a triangle.

Angels, fishes, goats and rabbis,

but it's Bella I return to, Bella of the flowers

who lifted his feet and bent him backwards

for a kiss; Bella, who rose above the picnic

like a balloon, and almost flew away for joy

as if the bird in his hand had given her its heart,

As if her heart was the bird in his hand.

Penelope Cline, The Wild Green Chagallian Tarot

The Moon, The Wild Green Chagallian Tarot

A dear friend sent me this lyrical tarot deck by Penelope Cline, who used the whimsical figures of Marc Chagall for inspiration.  Twenty-two major arcana cards painted in gouache on heavy watercolor paper. "Poetry in Paint" - www.figtreepress.co.uk

I've laid the cards out under a moon beam.  The Perigee moon in July is also known as the Buck Moon & Thunder Moon.  Young male deer will be sprouting their antlers as the first of three visible supermoons makes its appearance in 2014.

My brother Mark -  San Rafael, Ca.

Meanwhile, back in California, digging with a pick and shovel through his storage unit - amidst the six chess sets and 35,000 books - my brother found this Polaroid photo of Kev & I on the Sonoma Train, circa 1985.


We seem improbably young. We had just bought our first home in Forest Knolls, on the edge of Papermill Creek.  We had to beg, borrow - stopping short of stealing - to get our foot through the door of California real estate.  We were taking a chance on this house, situated on a flood plain. In 1982, a 100 year flood had swept thru Forest Knolls & the surrounding towns and counties.  I was living in Fairfax, Ca. at the time, but had gone to Scammons Lagoon in Baja, Ca. with a bunch of kayakers to explore the largest Gray Whale nursery in Baja. The mothers & baby whales came right up to the kayaks; I had the privilege of touching a baby whale.

On our way home from Baja we stopped overnight at a hotel in L.A., turned on the news and discovered that West Marin, Ca. had been declared a disaster area, the National Guard called out. The water was so high in the town of Fairfax that boats were being used to get around the village and residents were kayaking down Bolinas Ave.  Who knew we didn't have to go all the way to Baja to kayak?! 

Neighboring San Anselmo 1982 historic flood

Since the house had flooded before and there was the likelihood of it happening again, no flood insurance was to be had. And we probably could not have afforded it even if there were.  And sure enough, a few years later, the rain, she came, and the waters started rising again.  I wrote a poem about it, "On the Edge of Papermill Creek".  One of the illustrious literary lions from our writing group, Mike R. kindly sent it off to the Coastal Post, where it was published in the May 1, 1995 issue.  But by then we were living ON the water in a houseboat in Sausalito on Issaquah Dock.  

Issaquah Dock, Sausalito, CA.

When it began raining non-stop in France in November, each day became another soggy Groundhog Day; a répétition of rivers rising, memories "flooding" back. I looked for the poem and badgered my poor old writing pals to see if they could conjure up a copy, but alas, nada, & unless there was a hard copy somewhere the only other record was on an old hard drive in a computer bone yard somewhere.

Then in May, back in California, one of the moldy storage boxes coughed up a copy from the Coastal Post - dingue! (unreal)

On The Edge of Papermill Creek

It will never stop raining in this town.

Everything is sinking,

roads, spirits, bank accounts.

Only the creeks and reservoirs are rising,

Papermill, Lagunitas, Nicasio.

We should have put our house on stilts,

like smart birds, 

and planted Weeping Willows along the banks

to stem the erosion (those ladies love 

to get their feet wet.)

Instead,

we made love in the sunlight,

under an archway of oranges

In the moonlight

behind a slumbering pear tree

at dusk

while a blue deer captured 

our garden.

In the dark, wet morning,

while houses slide slowly

down the cheekbones of hillsides,

I am awakened by the sound of your hands

insistent as wild Madrones 

against the French doors.

I watch you stream barefooted 

to the deck

and arc breadballs to the baby steelheads,

leaping and shining as the sky splits apart,

and rain pours down like quicksilver.

It will never stop raining in this town, 

but I know somewhere out there 

in the Cadillac desert

an Ocotillo is on fire. 

Now here's where it gets kind of spooky, fourth dimensional, Twilight Zone-ish.

Jacques Henri Lartigue, 1931 - Renee Perle

I woke up in the middle of the night to the dark, rushing sounds of Papermill Creek spilling over its banks, closing in on the house.  From my bed I could see trees ripped from their roots, amputated branches caught on boulders - all spinning in a wild vortex, an unstoppable maelstrom.  I did not leave the bed, but could see the water mounting the deck, covering the kitchen floorboards.  A line from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" was running thru my head:  "I Sing the Body Electric".  I felt my body to be electrified & some grander portion of myself split off, rose above me, floating out over the creek where I opened my arms and with all my strength & all my might, I "pushed" the waters back. 

Marc Chagall - Stained glass window from a little church at Tudeley in Kent

"I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul." - Walt Whitman

Picasso Painting in Light - 1949

Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Our adjacent neighbors, a harpist and guitarist from the group Platero, had their house on stilts, so they were ok, but everyone else along the creek flooded...except for us.  Much later I found out the 100th episode of Twilight Zone was titled, "I Sing the Body Electric".

Toni Frisselle - 1939

We all have these unexplained events in our lives.  How do we know what we know? Hotpockets of knowing -- we call it magic or a sixth sense. And taken to another level, sometimes we can impact outcomes. 

I love this piece below my brother wrote in response to the Tarot forecasting I did of my friend Annie's moment of passing when I got back from California.  I think it applies to all of the esoteric arts and that which we cannot see, but know is there, like the invisible hand that supports us.   

Eerie about the cards. I've heard many stories like that and it is a reminder that we are all entangled at a quantum level. Did you know that there is no such thing as a true physical touch? Our atoms have fields that repel the fields of other atoms as they approach. There is never any physical contact between the nuclei of atoms (except in the extreme case of neutron stars, which are the dead and eternal corpse of the largest of suns). We can never really surpass our physical manifestation. And yet, at the subatomic level, we are forever interacting with each other. Experiments have shown electrons separated by vast distances suddenly changing their spin to match that of a sister electron artificially altered. How little we know and understand about the unseen. The cards are a gesture to the infinite. Is it any wonder that such a vibrant invisible reality must be in some sense available to us?   Mk

Annie & Bill - Geocaching Triumph - Abbaye de Boschaud - May 2013

Blog dedicated to Ann Duvall who graced us with her presence - Feb. 1, 1948 - June 15, 2014.  I feel you all around me. 

Anna Oneglia - annaoneglia.com

pining      requires

            every green chassis brushes a sunny dominance
dog ghosts the garden          merrily absence boasts presence

gesture upon gesture, sans discussion, the body of love rises
         splashing cool water       in the smooth chamber

        beneath the climbing vine, the mound of earth has settled
grief requires a body and someone looking back

             faraway whistling,              hips rusting


                                    Stephanie Marlis from Fine

Be alive in this moment; be conscious of your treasures. Be spontaneous with your joy and thankfulness. Show your gratitude. It's time to fall in love again.-- Lazaris

*Photos from the Eglise at Rauzet, a couple of miles from us where a dance collective
did some posing in the upper reaches of the Nave.  Beautiful to see the human shapes against the stone.  

SCAFFOLDING ON THE MEMORY PALACE, Moons & Macaroons

Don't tell me the moon is shining;

show me the glint of light on broken glass.

        - Anton Chekov

 

Friday the 13th, Lune de Miel - "Honey Moon" - Charras, Fr 

 

The Hare Jumped Over the Moon - Jodie Tucker

Stories was everything and everything was stories;
I was searching for the "gold tooth in God's crooked smile -
from "Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus" - BBC documentary about the American South

I warmed my bones in California where it was already July in May - gelato and firecrackers, open-toed shoes, air conditioning & sunscreen.  When I left France it was raining & when I returned it was raining.  It's been raining since November.  My eyes burned on the way to Sonoma from SF airport; Hwy 101 has lots of potholes. Still shiny, but California's promised land feels depleted, like a canvas stretched and painted over too many times.  They did indeed "pave paradise and put up a parking lot."

 CARS & COFFEE - Everywhere
"Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?" - Albert Camus

I'm not used to so many cars - two lanes of traffic to my left, two lanes to my right; I felt like a pinball ricocheting across the asphalt.  And you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a caffeine purveyor within a two meter radius. The mugs are huge; you could fit 20 teeny weeny French espressos into one Starbucks Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappaccino Blended Beverage (doesn't mean I didn't do my best to consume as many as I could.) And since everything else is gluten free and organic, it all works out!

Coffee Poster

Arriving at my Empress friend Dawn's oasis in Sonoma, she feeds me guacamole and bean chips. Since I'd spent the previous night half-asleep on Charles De Gaulle's airport floor, I was ravenous. (There had been a mix-up with hotel reservation).  I don't think I've ever tasted anything so good.

I climbed into the big clawfoot bathtub & soaked away the travel cooties.  On the guest room night stand was Stewart Warren's book of poetry:  "Here There Is Also Burning" - poems of place and poems of ardor.  In one of my blogs I wrote about Warren's book, "Pointing to My Heart:  Poetry Journey through the Visconti Sforza Tarot," so I am thrilled at this synchronicity, finding a kindred spirit here.

It is the hour of the Wolf, between night & dawn, ghosts and demons.  I am fried, but I scribble some notes which I won't be able to decipher later on, except for this passage which remained semi-legible from his poem Jemez, "...some happiness has descended or risen - anyway location is not what we thought.  My hand rises without prompting as I'm reminded to wave at travelers, these holy shapes and forms, this grand migration of ours."  With apologies to Warren if I have slaughtered his finely crafted words. Tarot threads in and out of his writing. There is a poem titled "The Hermit" & another poem, "In the Cards," references the Page of Wands -  buy his book & you won't be sorry. 

Next day in the early morning mist we take Maddie, Dawn's Jack Russell terrier, for a walk in the vineyards across the road to see the crooked armed grapevines pocketed on the sides of the rolling, golden hills of California. Hard squint & it could be France.

Caneros Vineyard - Sonoma

I've brought French Macarons with me all the the way from Paris *** Laduree's.  Not long ago there was a Macaron "smackdown" between Ladurees' and Pierre Hermes' pastry shops, both on Rue Bonaparte in Paris.  Who cares who won?  They are both fantastic.  But here's the kicker:  later in the week I went shopping at Costco in Novato and they had the same Macarons for a third of the price.  America = the land of plenty good eats. The variety & quality of the food made me dizzy as I walked thru the shops, bedazzled by exotic & home cooked take-a-ways; if I moved back I'd never cook again.  We eat a lot of leeks in France. 

NOSTALGIA -
 

Origin, late 18th century (in the sense 'acute homesickness'): modern Latin (translating German Heimweh 'homesickness'), from Greek nostos 'return home' + algos 'pain'.

There is a comfort in the familiar; I don't need a GPS to find my way around & the ease of acquisition is in marked contrast to days spent navigating French hardware stores or auto repair places trying to find a windshield wiper.  Yet, I now feel like a foreigner, astonished that neighbors aren't giving each other Vervaine and parsnips or freshly laid eggs.  And where is the laundry drying in the sun?  There are leaf blowers instead of aproned women sweeping the sidewalks.  I am  "homesick" for two homes, two countries, straddling two very different worlds.

I do as many readings as I can for friends & family who are "tangled up in blue" 

"Blue is glory and power, a wave, a particle, a vibration, a resonance, a spirit, a passion, a memory, a vanity, a metaphor, a dream. Blue is a simile.  Blue, she is like a woman." from Sacré Bleu, Christopher Moore.  

I see everyone I can, spend precious time with a friend who is dying; the time slips through my fingers.  I squeeze in a week at Harbin Hot Springs in northern CA, soaking and divining.  No cameras, no electronic devices, no internet. 

                                                                The Hot Pool - Harbin Hot Springs, Middletown, CA.

                                                                      Yoga & Meditation at the Temple

                                                    Grand Tableau Reading for Dawn, Lenormand Revolution Deck

At the 11th hour,  I go through the last of the storage items my poor friend has been schlepping around for a few years -  the Memory Palace in crates, full of photographs, poems, short stories, Art Deco hats, crystals etc. A mixture of pain and joy, a recognition of that other self who lived a very different life.

I found a poem my brother wrote me for my birthday in 1998:

Before, when work was the

Book of Numbers, all the

world was windows.

Windows are the promise,

sly tempters who are 

sometimes mirrors.  They

reveal possibility, and hope.

Now is the Day of Doors.

There are no certainties

on the other side.  No 

visions.  No revealed

Day.  But the door, once

opened, surrenders the

Universe.

And you are a window.

And you are a door.

The future opens in you

like Hinges of Light. 

Mark Kreighbaum

                                                             
                                                                  Sunrise on the Solstice, Charras, France

                                                                                       Chateau at Sunset

'Cause you're a sky full of stars

I'm going to give you my heart

'Cause you're a sky full of stars

I wanna die in your arms

You're a sky, you're a sky full of stars
Such a heavenly view
You're such a heavenly view

-Coldplay

LIVE TO THE POINT OF TEARS

             - Albert Camus 

  And if you are in the area, please join us for the Vernissage/gallery opening for our
new exhibit at Chateau Sainte Catherine outside of Marthon. 

Next time: Athena & The Trees, another anniversaire, "Three Things",  Adieu to Annie & Gesture to the Infinite.  What can't be said shall be Wept.