“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” Virginia Woolf It’s a bowl full of jumbled globes, the size of large olives or medium escargot, set casually to one side of the cheesemongers slab, that catches my attention. They are dusty-green, veined with … Continue reading Savage Fruit…
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between lightning and a lightning bug” Mark Twain A friend of ours, a restauranteur here in Arles, asked us to translate, or rather take a look at his English translation of their French/Lebanese menu. He’s … Continue reading Lost in French-lation: What’s on the Menu?
“Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.” William Butler Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’ Quick – where’s … Continue reading Come Together…
“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but the answer it gives to a question of yours.” Italo Calvino All cities have a sound. All villages and squares, all roads and hilltops, all walks along the quai, and market day rambles. It’s easy to discount it as ‘noise’, or block it … Continue reading The Sound of the City…
At the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. Norman Maclean The Rhône at Arles is a tidal river, which is a thing that takes some getting used to. There are hours of the day where it torrents northward with a single-minded purpose towards Avignon, like … Continue reading A River Runs Through It…
Walking home with Jess and Max after dropping Alexander at school, out the old cloister gates and through the winding cobbled streets redolent of woodsmoke and the scent of baking bread. The rhythmic clang of metal on metal, not mechanical, hand labor, off some distance, but so distinctive you can almost taste it on the … Continue reading An Alchemy of Place…
Several July 4ths ago, when travel was possible… Pine burns hot, fast and faster – tumbling headlong, embracing immolation in a hissing, spitting rush. It makes good kindling for harder species like oak and ash, a satisfying crackle of resinous sputters like tiny solar flares igniting the denser, longer-burning woods. I’ve spent the past several … Continue reading Another Place…
Chasing Snails (And Other Movable Feasts) 