It rains HEARTS in Soudat & rains in HEARTS in Paris - Adieu Pierre

This entry will pour down like rain and meander like a river...

Soudat, France - March 2015

A couple of weeks ago I motored to Soudat, a tiny commune in the Dordogne, approx. 30 minutes away, to do some tarot readings. Arrived a bit early with "le temps de ne rien faire" (time to do nothing) so I wandered around the hamlet in the rain taking photographs.  The place was festooned with metal hearts on barns, sculptural hearts; painted hearts on the sides of buildings, and more hearts on the walls of the school.  Asked a local I bumped into, "what's with all the hearts?"  He said that they'd had a festival of "Hearts" a few years ago and these were what remained.  Enchanting.

Cherub, Soudat - March 2015

In Paris, the rain is harder to bear, not romantic, just grey, extra wet & unyielding.  I snapped a fragment of Paul Verlaine's poem on a wall somewhere in the 20th arr.  "There is weeping in my heart like the rain falling on the city." Somebody named "Marty", must have been feeling triste when he scribbled Verlaine's poem on the wall, or maybe he lost his umbrella.  I know how sad that made me when I lost mine and had to walk 20 city blocks to Enrique's Pantheatre in the pouring rain.  

from Romances Sans Paroles - 1874

Verlaine was a study;  a life careening back and forth between naive innocence and criminality.  In his last years, the Prince of Poets, spent most of his royalties on a pair of middle-aged prostitutes.  He also frequented a gay man, Bibi-la-Purée, (sounds a little like a dog food, doesn't it?) who was famous for stealing umbrellas (hmmm, maybe that's what happened to mine!).  At the same time Verlaine was being celebrated as one of France's leading poets, he was snoring in slums, later spending 18 months in prison after shooting Rimbaud in the wrist. In and out of hospitals, suffering from cirrhosis, gastritis, rheumatism, diabetes, he continued to drink, and when Andre Gide visited him in Broussais hospital, Verlaine told him he was working on a "series of masturbatory poems".  No wonder his heart was weeping!

Paris in the rain

I prefer seeing Paris thru the window, like Chagall did

Paris Through the Window, Marc Chagall - 1913

How hungry we are for color when each day is grey.

March came in like a mewling lion. Three days in a row I pulled Lethe, Four of Water, from Ellen Lorenzi-Prince's Dark Goddess Tarot.  Lethe is the Greek Goddess of Forgetfulness and one of the five rivers of Hades, also known as Ameles Patamos, the river of unmindfulness.  In classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means, oblivion, forgetfulness, concealment.   I'd pulled this same card two years ago, in November, when we were entering the time of darkness, hibernation.  At the Equinox, we are moving into the light. I found it perplexing that more people commit suicide in the springtime.  There's a theory that the "rebirth" accentuates a feeling of hopelessness in contrast with all the new life bursting forth.

darkgoddestarot.com

What was she trying to tell me?  I know how forgetful I am already.  I like Ellen's take on it:  "Let the memory of evil be washed away."  How serene we might be if we remembered our joys & let the sorrows go down the drain or be taken by the river. Ovid wrote that the Lethe river flowed through the cave of Hypnos, where its murmuring would induce drowsiness.  

Sarah Moon, Photographer

So far this March, I've had more demand for Tarot readings than January & February combined.  There is a pervasive feeling out there of being "dispossessed".  It's true that there are the perennial assaults of law suits, ill health, divorces, and leaking roofs etc., but as Maria Popova says in Brain Pickings: "There are also darker undercurrents of philosophical lamentation."

From David the Dreamer:  Extraordinary 1922 children's book illustrated by Freud's cross-dressing niece, Tom.  The kind of book that reads you as you read it.  www.brainpickings.org

David the Dreamer: His Book of Dreams, Tom Seidmann-Freud Illustrator

There is something very disorienting about being out of sight of land in a small boat, especially when you find out, with a sinking heart, that you don’t know which way to row to get home again. It is like getting lost anywhere else, only much worse; for there isn’t any Policeman or Kind Lady to help you, and, although a lot of people you don’t know all looking at you at once is bad enough, nobody at all looking at you makes you feel even more serious. Very-Little-David felt serious indeed… He told himself sensibly that it would do no good to cry, but he did cry. So there you are.  Ralph Bergengren

David the Dreamer

We feel out of control of some essential element of our lives.  Sometimes I think we corner ourselves with edicts and broomsticks of dictatorial beliefs.  I like this piece from Wendell Berry called "The Real Work": 
                        

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey. 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

                                

Celebrate the befuddlement, the awkwardness, the hesitation and the blockages, how about that! 

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Or, go ahead and cry

                           

         
Through the rain and the tears, there's always Tarot, the cards like a Lighthouse, guiding us in the dark, thru the storms, helping to avoid shipwrecks. The last few months, I read at an Abbaye, a horse ranch, at Festivals in Aubeterre, Vertaillac, Chalais, Brossac, Abjat-sur-Bandiat, in Paris, Bordeaux, on-line, on Skype, cell phone, on a train, the metro, in a cafe, in a converted donkey shed.  I read for French, Dutch, Germans, English, South Africans, Scottish, Irish, Americans, four little French boys (my favorites).  Oh, so many stories and aren't we Story People, a riff inspired by Antonio Machado, from my friend Jeanne:

Aren't we story people

picking up the story 

as we can,

picking up the ship too

and carrying it across

as we can

carrying 

and being carried

& being 

cared for by story.

Jeanne Bennion (Ruffles)

"Todo  queda

Todo pasa,

Pero lo nuestra es pasar.

Pasar  haciendo caminos,

Caminos  sobre el mar." 

everything  remains,

everything  passes

but ours  is  to  pass,

to pass making/ creating/ shaping roads,

roads  across the sea  //  the ocean.     Antiono Machado

Aubeterre-sur-Dronne - converted donkey shed

Reading at Vertaillac for beautiful Trish from Studio Lavalette

Chalais

My four adorable french boys, full of mischief and cupcakes. 

A special querent - Abjat-sur-Bandiat

Reading for Fiona - Abbaye de Boschaud, Villars

At the Abbaye (which Fiona declared a true bijou), we heard our first Cuckoo of the spring and the elusive Hoopoe Bird.  Here's a haiku by the famously belligerent, Japanese poet, Buson:

                                                          The mountain cuckoo?
                                                           I have no idea what's up
                                                           with that fuckin' bird.

Here's Fiona imitating the Hoopoe Bird; I wish I had a video clip:

Fiona - Abbaye de Boschaud

Hoopoe

Communing with the Spirits

This blog is dedicated to Pierre Mittaud, our French Fairy Godparent who "entered another room" on March 11, 2015. The ghost of loss is upon us & it's "raining in our hearts."  Now you are a "beam of light," but then you always were.  Our favorite Pierre disant (saying) "Are You Crazy?!"

                                      We will never forget you, beloved Pierre. 

Pierre at home - Savigny-sous-Faye

Skyler, Mona, RA & K - Our last happy time together with you, Pierro

Sarah Moon

Note:  I am booked up for private readings till Mid-May - I will be reading again at Le Marquisat  annual Spring Arts & Crafts Fayre, Gardes le Pontaroux, April 26th, 10 - 5 p.m.

REALITY UNADORNED & Morning Glow: Reflections

  I know that when I die, I will become a beam of light. 

                                                      - Albert Einstein

                                                        

Marie Gervais - 106 years young - Le Pontillou

Childhood slips quickly away,
faces fade without names, only
a few lifetimes visible on the periphery.
You can hardly keep track of now,
it's illusory eternity.  - Morning Glow: Reflections
Stewart S. Warren

                                                            
             Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.  Albert Einstein
                                                                                                                     

My friend Madame S. - Le Pontillou

The hands that turned the first earth,
the hands that watered the sprouts,
the hands that raised themselves in praise,
the hands that knew what leavening was,
For an instant--this particular loaf.  
      Morning Glow: Reflections



                  We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
                                                                                                    Carl Sagan

Monsieur Gervais - Le Pontillou

I'd been thinking about light a lot, because there was so little of it.  It rained steadily most every day from November thru February.  One day in mid-February, there was a break in the clouds. 

Chateau de Charras

I pedaled to Le Pontillou, a farm outside of Doumerac, to visit Madame S.  She had invited me to tea weeks earlier, but the rain, the cold inside my chest, had kept me indoors. 

The River - Alessandro Sanna

The River, by the Italian artist, Alessandro Sanna, is a book about the seasons and the different kinds of experiences and stories that each season brings, and  about our connection to place, as well as the connections between geography, setting, and the stories we tell. The River is also about the flow of time, which flows like the river, and carries us.

The River - Alessandro Sanna

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy - Rumi

Poster on frigo

When I arrived, Madame was tending to her rabbits and chickens, and readying her garden patch. In her early 90's now, she manages the farm by herself.  In the kitchen she had orchids lined up and seed packets organized.  Minette, her cat, jumped right onto my lap.  Recently I learned that Minette is slang for "puss," young teenage girl - Attention! Can also mean "muff diving". As Minette purred away, I was sure Madame didn't have a clue about her lascivious background.

Minette

Madame's farmhouse is enormous, large enough to have housed the main family and all their extensions, brothers and sisters, belles-sœurs and beaux-frères, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews.  I took a picture of the family tree, the Gervais line growing right out of the trunk, the branches of La Farges, Baruches, Tricards, Barrets, Brejouards, Reytoins, all flourishing right there on the wall. 

Gervais Family Tree

Then we went to a section of the house I'd never seen before, another dining room and salon. On the front of a large china cabinet was a blown up photo of Marie Gervais.  I thought it looked familiar; then I saw the affiche (poster) on the refrigerator from the gallery/Vernissage I'd attended in 2012 at La Tour Saint-Jean in Marthon. Her great-nephew, Franck Brudieux had paid hommage to Marie for her 106 years on the planet.

Franck Brudieux

 And the fruits of her life...

La Tour Saint-Jean Vernissage 2012

Alors pourquoi Marie?

Eight years old at the beginning of the First World War, over time, in spite of herself, she became a symbol, a representative of another world, that of early aviation, suicides linked to the shame of being a single mother, and a certain idea of the sacrifices of the peasantry.  From her window at Le Pontillou, she had seen men go to war, the effects of consolidation, rural exodus, and the arrival of the mechanization of agriculture, steadily knitting through it all.

All this time I'd been getting to know Madame S., I never connected her with Marie Gervais, who was her adored belle-soeur, sister-in-law. Madame showed me photo albums of the early days of the farm, the men bringing in the hay, les chasses, photos of the hunt.   I remembered the very day, three years ago, when I was biking along & stopped for a chat with Madame as she was taking her walk, and she told me her sister-in-law had died -  she was now all alone. But there was no self-pity or even great sadness, rather the forbearance that I've come to expect and appreciate in the French character. 

Her nephew, who became an "urban", a city dweller,  recalled his vacations at Le Pontillou, when Marie was still there, "part of the landscape, equal to herself, unperturbed." At the crossroads that are called "The Pearl," Marie was always waiting at the end of the white gravel road Franck traveled on his bicycle -- the same gravel road that I traveled to see Madame S.  Men, like "rocks," had shaped this small hamlet in their image and Franck had tried to "freeze-frame" twenty years of stability and happiness, as he watched their small world disappearing.

It's ironic, because much of the time, Kevin and I feel as though we are living in very rural France, where life is simple, old ways are honored, a "Reality Unadorned."  Another persistent illusion!

Eugene Atget

In Paris, in 1924, an American artist, Berenice Abbott, working as an assistant in Man Ray's studio, stumbled across some photographs by an elderly French neighbor of Man Ray's, Eugene Atget.

"The impact was immediate and tremendous. There was a sudden flash of recognition - the shock of reality unadorned. The subjects were not sensational, but nevertheless shocking in their very familiarity. The real world, seen with wonderment and surprise, was mirrored in each print. Whatever means Atget used to project the image did not intrude between subject and observer."

Berenice Abbott

Photography can only represent the present.  Once photographed the subject becomes part of the past.  Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott - Light thru Prism

At the tender age of 16, Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light.

Wherever there is light one can photograph - Alfred Stieglitz

On Sunday, as we wandered thru Charras' annual Brocante, my psyche was flooded with the artifacts & remnants of an Old World, epitaphs of the rural exodus - some treasures and loads of junk. 

Brocante, Charras March, 2015

There is only one loss - only one.

I follow it down passageways,       

        past the necessity of shattered time.    

                            

At each new iteration
and spontaneous release, 
a moment of freefall and doubt.

Villebois-Lavalette, Sunflowers in January 2015

I try to hold on to what 

was before - to no avail.   

Medieval Fortress, Villebois-Lavalette - January 2015

In burned out towns and tired minds,

in the circuit overload of commerce

and consuming, what appears fragile

is growing from rock and steel,

the new world pulsing, pushing

through the old. 

                                            
                                                        

The first Crocuses, Doumerac - March 2015

Mushroom Hunting with Pierre-Jacques in Vouzan, Nov.

The light, sister asks,

how does it come there in the sky?

An array of solar collectors, he says,

billions of human beings

and all Nature of creatures,

Together we make it so.

Morning Glow:  Reflections

Stewart S. Warren

I was honored to write the foreword to Stewart S. Warren's latest poetry book, Morning Glow: Reflections. C'est un livre pour les âges.   It can be purchased on Amazon. 

And will the self-promotion never end??!  My Celtic Faerie Tales:  Now, Voyager, about an orphaned Border Collie searching for his true home, have gone live at:  magicaladventuresofvoyager.com

Wales - Pembrokeshire Coast

NEVER LOSE A HOLY CURIOSITY - Albert Einstein

REALITY UNADORNED, Slouching towards Bethlehem & Raining Cranes

Imagination is the eye of the soul

    - Joseph Joubert (Recueil des Pensées de M. Joubert)

Full Moon Over Charras - December 2014

Charras Sky - December 2014

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem" - Dawn on the way to Vertaillac - December

"...The darkness drops again; but now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"     W. B. Yeats

Cranes still flying south - January 2015

Wild Ginger - February 14, 2015

I know. I know.  It's February, my missing Valentine's day, notwithstanding, I'm still in love with you, dear readers, though I've been unfaithful.   I promised you Alchemy & A Paris Hangover - Part II, but it's nowhere to be seen.  Each time I set about spilling my guts, poised to share the further adventures of the époustouflante (breathtaking) dreamscape that is Paris, the world changed once again.  Montmartre + the inaugural opening of the renovated Picasso Museum + the Catacombs + Sacré coeur + Lapin Agile... now blurred and diffused.  And to be fair, Joan d'Arc, Niki de St. Phalle, and Napolean are a hard act to follow.

So let's see if I can perform a little alchemy and transmute the ordinary days of my simple country life into something of merit. Mais avant, a few photos of my last days in Paris before all the leaves tumbled down and the cartoonists fell.

Monsieur Dutilleul - Sculptor Jean Marais

Without Mila, our Venezuelan friend, Dermot, Marsha and I would never would have shook hands with the sculpture above:  Le Passe-Muraille, homage to the writer, Marcel Aymé, depicting his anti-hero, Monsieur Dutilleul, from one of his stories, "The Man Who Walked Through Walls" (later made into a film).  Dutilleul discovered he had an unusual talent to be able to walk thru solid walls, but sadly, instead of using his power for good, he abused and lost it, ending up forever stuck in a wall. I hate it when that happens!

But you have to admit that loafer he's wearing is truly "luxe de l'esprit"*  - luxury of the moment.

Mila - Montmartre

Here's Mila giving him the golden handshake - it's supposed to bring you good luck (so maybe you can walk thru walls too). *wink wink, Mike.

Another treasure Mila led us to was the "I love You Wall"  - The initiative of Frédéric Baron is engraved in this long chain of silent passions.  It is a meeting place and a space where love comes together in every language on 612 enameled lava tiles.  The shape of the lava tiles echo the sheets of paper on which Baron wrote his texts. The splashes of color on the fresco are fragments of  broken hearts; the Wall bringing about a reunification of humanity torn apart - a place of reconciliation.

"I Love You:  The Wall" - Butte Montmartre, Paris

A disciple of Phileas Fogg, Baron dreamed of a trip around the world in 80 "I Love You's." He started by asking his brother to write "I love you," then neighbors, Arabs, Portuguese, Russian, Hawaiian, Irish, etc. Eventually he filled three notebooks with "I love you" written a thousand times in 300 different languages.  Claire Kito, an oriental calligrapher assembled the script. Maybe it is not as architecturally imposing as Venice's Bridge of Sighs or the Taj Mahal, but it certainly is as romantic. 

Trying to point out "I love you" in Gaelic for Dermot & Kevin, but it's up too high

Marsha, pointing to Hungarian "I Love You" for Lorenc

But here's my favorite part of the Wall - Wallflower Rita Hayworth's thought bubble:

Love is messy, chaotic...so let's love!

I became intrigued by the rubbed out figure to the right.  Was it supposed to be a man looking messy? A bit of research led me to a street photographer's blog:  Sab's Secret Paris (Sab Will, www.parissetmefree.com).  Therein he revealed it was originally Ava Gardner up there with a thought bubble that said:  "Soyons raisonable... exigeons l'impossible, a quote from Che Guevera, "Let's be reasonable...demand the impossible."

Sab (a fine detective) tracked down the artist, Rue Meurt D'Art (Jean Marc Paumier), who had the original Ava rolled up in the back of his studio. The master of "Collage Sauvage," Rue earned the title for his zealous, revolutionary sticking of stuff all over the walls of the 20th arr., which reached its savage peak on May 28, 2011, the 140th anniversary of the two month long siege by the Paris Commune in 1871.  It's a rich and complex chunk of history which made me so weary reading through it that I am cribbing Sab Will's pithy summation:  "The Commune was a two-month attempt at some sort of rule by the working classes, which ended in disaster, chaos and bloodshed."

Aux Morts de la Commune 21-28 Mai, 1871, Photo Sab Will

At the wall above, in Pere La Chaise cemetery, 147 brave communards fought in the mud with their bare hands, were lined up against the wall and executed. In all an estimated 30,000 commune members fell, many of whom were women. This ended what was dubbed, Semaine Sanglante, the Week of Bloodshed. The group in the photo are singing Le Temps des Cerises, a revolutionary song dedicated to a nurse who supposedly died during the bloody week.  It's a beautiful song, and you can hear Yves Montand singing it on You Tube if you need a good cry. 

Women of the Commune - Les Morts - Photo Sab Will

I discovered the graphic account below by the English journalist, Archibald Forbes, who recorded the aftermath of the Commune in an article in The Daily News, 26 May, 1871:

"When I returned, the communists were at their last gasp in the Château d'Eau, the Buttes de Chaumont and Père-Lachaise. I visited Père-Lachaise, where the very last shots had been fired … the ghastliest sight was in the south-eastern corner where, close to the boundary wall, there had been a natural hollow. The hollow was now filled up by dead. There they lay, tier above tier, each successive tier powdered over with a coating of chloride of lime - two hundred of them patent to the eye, besides those underneath hidden by the earth covering layer after layer. Among the dead were many women … faces distorted out of humanity with ferocity and agony combined. How died these men and women? Just yonder was where they were posted up against that section of pock-pitted wall … and were shot to death as they stood or crouched.”

Victimes des Revolutions, 1909, Paul Moreau Vauthier - Outside Wall Pere La Chaise

 

And for those of you rabid Eco-Warriors, lest you think Rue is degrading the landscape or has much in common with the Graffiti Artists, who indelibly mark their territories, you'll be happy to know, that slowly, (if by weather) or quickly, (if by random officials) the gluey collages degrade and disappear.

Ava Gardner reasonably demanding the impossible

Rue Meurt D'Art (Jean Marc Paumier)

Rue Meurt d'Art changing Ava's thought bubble

Ava went from "demanding the impossible"  to "alors aimons"...maybe Beaudelaire was right when he wrote in "Les Fleurs du Mal" :   The form of a city changes faster than the heart of a mortal.

Well, that wasn't a very cheery patch of history, started out so fun-loving.  Perhaps I'll pull a rabbit out of my pan.

Cabaret au Lapin Agile (The Nimble Rabbit Cabaret)  - Montmartre Cabaret, 18th arr.

Interior ca. 1880 - 90

I know this is going to reveal a très grand slice of my cultural ignorance, but I didn't know that Lapin Agile was a real place.  I thought Steve Martin a clever bunny for coming up with the concept and the play.  Finding out the authentic history does not make him any less clever, but he did have some good stuff to work with.  Originally called the Cabaret des Assassins, it was a favorite watering hole for struggling artists and writers like Picasso, Modigliani, Appolinaire, Utrillo, Ernest Heminway, Henry Miller,  also had its fair share of pimps, eccentrics, anarchists, students from the Latin Quarter and the Bourgeoisie, always up for a bit of slumming.

I would have loved to hang out there for the evening, drinking Pernod, jabbering about art, and carving my initials into the table top, but it was closed and one needs reservations for everything these days.  Oddly, despite all the tourism, the place still seems to retain its original charm, and looking at the posted menu, even the prices seem more in line with the last century.   Paris manages to be so enduringly optimistic, or as one cynic asked:  is it just a city in love with its own myths? 

Me & Marsha hopping about

Picasso - Les Noces de Pierrette, 1905

Next time: Slouching Towards Christmas Fetes/Events = Tarot, Tarot, Tarot, more rains, more cranes, & Unadorned Reality

William Blake- Prophecy