2015 FRANCE * Aquitaine (March 24)

The problem with putting off things you've always wanted to do 

is that eventually you run out of always.  

~Robert Brault

  

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

A busy couple weeks in Perigord. 

Life is pretty “normal” now – typical days at Denis & Vivi’s: we take walks, work around the house, I paint, and we visit friends for a few days.  There is a great path just below the hill where the house sits that goes down through the woods and can go for kilometers in either direction.  Périgueux has an group that organizes and cares for these paths.  There the light streams between the trees, rich mosses and ivy on the north side of the path that slants upward catching the sunrays from the south.  The light and texture inspire me.  It is quiet at the base of the ravine, except for birds chirping, and occasional woodpecker, and the crunch of the flint rocks underfoot (that give one a good chance to either strengthen or twist ankles).  Other paths come and leave for acres and acres.  Some are marked with simple posts topped in blue or empty plastic bottles.  Large fallen trees aim mostly north to south telling a story of a wild storm in 1999.  These woods are lovely, sun-dappled, and deep (Robert Frost running through my mind but adjusted to fit my situation) – but I have no major promises to keep.  Miles I will go and it doesn’t matter when I sleep.  I’m walking in Paradise.

Old friends

I have spent nearly a month of travel to visit various friends:  Eva in Valencia, Spain,  Annamaria in Bologna, Italy, and Agnès and Patrice in Lyon, France.   Back at Payenché for a couple days then off to visit friends of Vivi and Denis (and Chanh and Mimi) in Poitiers:  Ives and Ingrid.  They all knew each other when they lived in New York City and took an English class together.  To this day they all maintain contact.  As I get to know each of these people (I knew Chanh first when we were at the University together) I find they are all great people.  Complete in character and at peace with themselves.  Not enough people find themselves in such a self-fulfilled condition in life.

Poitiers

Ives and Ingrid now live in the Vieux Ville section of Poitiers, France, and there are the typical twelfth to sixteenth century buildings all around, many have façades in the Tudor style.  Their building is renovated from a ruin in 2000 (Ives tells us) by a man who purchased the building for about 20,000€ and invested about 300,000€ for remodeling.  He then sold it at a loss.  Some of the elements of the apartment are authentic but others are simply for an antique appearance.  Their “house” includes the atrium garden and the third through fifth floors.  It is charming with their collections of paintings, antique etched spritzer bottles of various colors, painted eggs, and a terracotta sculpture of a young girl that belonged to Ives’ grandmother.    

Sunday afternoon we attend a wine festival where various vineyards offer samples of their reds, whites, rosés, and sparkling wines.   I got to try two or three, but it was so busy, that was about all I could acquire, so I focused on my favorites of Malbec and Bergerac.  Denis and Ives both purchased a couple cases.  Better to buy directly from the producers and skip the middleman.  I wish I could, but I do not have enough room in my suitcase.  (I did find one vineyard whose name was “Barbem” … so close!)

Back to Payenché and we garden, I paint, we visit friends, Vivi cooks, Denis finishes the sink cabinet. There was a bit of sunshine last weekend so Vivi took advantage and cut the backyard yew into a large bonsai.  We go to Chez Poète one day and visit Vivi’s father.  The house, high on a hill in Celles, has been in her family for six generations.  Last time I was here we stayed for a couple weekends.  This day we just have a quick visit then return for an evening of local musicians and a food/fund raiser in Saint Astier.    

Montignac

A couple days later we meet up with a young American student, Emily, who is completing her Bates College degree requirements here in Périgueux teaching English at a local school, and we head to Montignac.  Home of the Lascaux Caverns and Vivi’s brother Armel.  He and his wife have a restaurant on the edge of the Vezere River where we spent a number of weekends during my last visit.  It was good to see them all and enjoy their great family-recipe “pizza” and meal.  

 

After we took the long way back to Périgueux through the Dordogne valley past many Cro-Magnon, troglodyte, and medieval cave towns and châteaus.  This area is amazing.  So much to know and see and experience – and it is just plain beautiful.  I remark:  “The Cro-Magnon sure knew how to pick the spots!”

Southwest France.  One week to Maine.

This week is cold and damp. We are visiting Madeleine in St.Jean-de-Marsac.  She is the widow of a potter who was well known in the area.  He threw and she painted the designs on the pottery.  It is a large, old house but not of the same era as Payenché.  Madeleine is a wonderful lady, energetic, happy, and tiny.  (I think she comes up to my shoulder.)    

We head to the beach-side just to see the ocean and golden sand, then toward Capbreton where there are extraordinary high and low tides now.  Madeleine has photos from a bit ago of the ocean covering the streets and filling the subterranean parking lot.  This day the sailboats in the marina are sitting in water that is so shallow that three ski-jet riders need to get off their machines to push their jets out into the deeper water.  The inlet streams are draining back into the ocean over cascades that are about four or five feet high.  Normally one would not even be aware that they exist.    Madeleine has not seen such tides in her lifetime here.   
Unprecedented! 

Friends are in and out.  Neighbor Dominique and author/potter Chris who is from outside Auch, just west of Toulouse.  Chris is publishing a book-journal that she created after a pilgrimage through 88 Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku.  She has also completed a pilgrimage of Saint James Way (El Camino Santiago known mostly by the Martin Sheen movie “The Way”).

We will visit one more friend before returning to Payenché this weekend. Vivi wants to have an open-house to invite friends by for aperitif, to see my artwork I’ve created this trip and to say “à la prochaine”. One week remaining.  Then I head back to Maine.  (I am really hoping the sunny weather there for the next few days will melt away much of the remaining snow there).  Ready to see my family and friends, yet so torn because I love France and my dear friends here.  Vivi and Denis have opened their hears and home and friends and family to me.  It is such a blessing to me.  They will never realize how wonderful it is for me to have them in my life.  They are absolutely amazing people - I can barely begin to explain it.   I kid them and say that I’m the “American Cousin”.  But it feels that way to me. 

Sunset at Payenché last week

Thanks to the cloudy, damp weather, I am more ready now to head home than I have been before.  I am getting excited for the group trip during the third week of April when I have twelve with me to go to the Côte d’Azur (the French Riviera), Cassis, Monaco, Arles, and Paris.  I’m willing to pay the Cloud Piper now if it means we can have the sunshine for that trip!

I can always come back to Aquitaine in the summer...
 

The question for each man is not what he would do if he had the means, 
time, influence, and educational advantages, 
but what he will do with the things he has.
 ~Hamilton  

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