This weekend in Treignac there was a water sports festival. The local power company turned on the taps at the dam upriver from our house and let loose a torrent from Friday to Monday. Last year Treignac hosted the world kayaking championships, and does so regularly–but this year they hosted the championship trials. Our home is on a bend in the river and it was interesting to see how dramatically the water level and mood of the river changed behind our garden.
We signed up for a rafting excursion which started on the north end of town and wound around to the south end. Our total time in the raft was about 45 minutes.
My wife and I have rafted several times in the USA, and once on the border of Panama and Costa Rica. She got a group of friends together to join our team and after the typical safety gear and instruction period we were off.
Our guide was a bit adventurous. There is a small dam 300 meters upstream from our house which has a gentle ramp built in for kayaks and rafts. He told us “We are not going down the slide, we are going over the wall.” Quite exciting to take a 4-foot vertical plunge into churning foam!
The Barrage du Pisciculture at the end of our property–our rafting guide took us down over the wall!
It was lovely seeing our building from the water. The most tranquil part of the river floats around a slow bend which borders our garden and then goes under the Pont de la Brasserie, built in 1840. A friend was stationed at the wall to snap photos of us as we passed. Poor soul–she was originally a team member but fell and broke her arm a few days before the adventure and could not participate! We definitely owe her a bottle of wine for waiting so long at our place.
Photo by Kate Gratton, taken from our garden as we passed Moulin SAGE
I was pleasantly surprised by the course–I thought it would be rather tranquil and had no idea how choppy and full of attitude the water would be. There were a few really rugged spots of more than 100 meters and at least 3 substantial drops of class 3 or more. Fortunately our raft was equipped with foot straps or we would have lost crew members at different points. On one steep drop by a large outcropping we almost tipped over.
Photo by Barb Wigley, taken from her garden near the Vieux Pont, TreignacPhoto by Barb Wigley. “You two look like marauding Vikings in this one,” she wrote.
We got to pass under the medieval Vieux Pont in the center of town, and see the famous post card view of Treignac from a raft. My favorite spot however was seeing the Rocher de Folles from underneath. We’d done the hike to the outcropping previously, and got to see it from a different vantage.
It was quite an experience, and already we are looking forward to doing it again next year. Today is all about recovery after the strenuous workout–and also about cleaning up the gite apartment after a 5-man kayaking team checks out later this morning!
I’ve gone to the cinema for the first time here in France, and seen a wonderful Czech film from the 1960s, called Daisies in English and Les Petites Margarites in French.
I found it vastly entertaining, with a sort of relentless anarchic silliness propelling its basic storyline. Two disaffected young ladies decide to humiliate older men out for a roll in the hay, and they have a great time frolicking and pranking their way through the city and eventually the countryside.
The film’s use of color and prismatic effects, its clever montages and collage sequences, its peculiar cuts and crisp photography demonstrate a mastery of technique. Young director Věra Chytilová made a small miracle behind the Iron Curtain. Which, of course, was promptly banned.
While watching Daisies I had to wonder if John Waters saw this film–it features his sort of merciless energetic absurdity. There is a lot of food porn thrown in for good measure.
The film was shown in Uzerche at the Cinema Louis-Jouvet. The theater is sort of like Baltimore’s Charles with its art-house fare mixed in with big release horror and French and Hollywood releases. I had no trouble following the French subtitles except for the word vioc, which occurred twice, and apparently is argot for old dudes.
I’ve also watched Stalker on the MosFilm YouTube channel. They have several classic Soviet films and other arthouse fare available on high-quality streams with English subtitles. I was quite happy to note they had several Andrei Tarkovsky films I’d not seen.
Stalker puts the bleak in oblique. It is, like many of this maestro’s titles, a spiritual workout. You’ll feel like you spent a month in Gurdjieff’s labor program after slogging through nearly 3 hours in The Zone. It is harrowing and beautiful. Imagine Estragon, Pozzo, and Lucky no longer waiting for Godot but trying to find him/her/it/they instead.
Back in the early spring I was cutting brambles and digging out weeds and noticed in the side of a steep hill on our property that there was a tiny bird nest.
Inside the nest were three very tiny eggs. In this part of France there is a law that one cannot cut hedges between March 15 and July 31 because of nesting birds, and I take this rule seriously. I pay attention to all the birds I see and like to observe breeding pairs and note where they hang out. This nest made me very happy because it was in the ground and easy to see when I walked up and down from the garden daily. The mother would often flit in and out as I worked nearby.
Last week I noted that the eggs had hatched, and I could see moving chicks in the nest. I didn’t stay to watch or examine because I didn’t want to cause anxiety in the mother, who I figured was close about and foraging. Again I was quite happy to see these babies and to think about nature and its small miracles. Often a trip to our garden is like an un-narrated David Attenborough special.
But shortly after I noticed the chicks had hatched, I found two of them on the cement path early in the morning.
I don’t know if they fell out, or were pulled out by a mammal, or if the mother had cast them out (which happens sometimes). I did hear and see a cat very early that morning on the other side of our building. One chick was completely gone, the other two were left behind.
How devastating! My entire day was colored by this discovery. I’d looked forward to seeing these little guys go through adolescence and thence into the world, ideally to return to our garden with mates to create future generations. I thought how cruel Mother Nature can be!
But of course Mother Nature is not cruel, she is indifferent and neutral. Can’t have yang without yin, after all.
I feel for the mother, who worked so hard! Hopefully she and her mate try again next year with more success.
Pere Goriottook a while. I started reading it over a year ago as we prepared to move from Panama to France. I felt I needed to brush up my language skills, and had never read a Balzac novel.
The French was challenging at first, and I took it slow, reading a few pages a day. Lots of detailed descriptions, often quite flowery, with unfamiliar adjectives and colloquial expressions. Also, the use of the literary past tense which is not typical in spoken French was a bit difficult at first–I’d forgotten some of those forms.
But the last 20% of the novel I blew through quickly. I think my confidence in French reached a level I’d not had in 20 years, and suddenly I could breeze through pages instead of struggling and looking up multiple words.
It’s strange that when I got my degree in French Lit we did not read Balzac. Pere Goriot is a true masterpiece, a document of Parisian culture, a portrait of class divisions and the morals and ethical complications individuals faced when trying to break into the life of the glittering upper crust, or trying desperately to remain there. It’s difficult to say much without spoiling it–but Rastignac certainly learns a great deal about himself and the woman he ‘loves’ (or at least needs in order to ascend in society).
I would like to continue reading the Comedie Humaine, but must be selective. Perhaps Illusions Perdusand a couple others? I’m at the stage of life where I have to decide carefully what reading I want to accomplish, and what I would like to reread. I likely have a couple decades left and I already have 30 years of books I would like to read or re-read, LOL. And trying to complete reading lists in French and English, while hopefully adding some Spanish into the mix–makes me wonder where I’ll find the time.
And speaking of searching for time, I’d like to tackle Proust in French, and fear that might take up more than I have left!
I don’t simply have recurring dreams in the typical sense that narratives and plot events return again and again. I have rather dreams which happen in the same settings over and over. These settings change and evolve mysteriously over decades, and have recurring characters as well as themes.
Some Examples
A cove at an ocean beach. Was initially undeveloped, then had a house, then a small development. Most recently there was some sort of detention camp there.
An undiscovered wing of my childhood home. It’s impossibly large and far older and more mysterious, and is accessed through different closet or cabinet doors, or via the basement, of the “real” home.
An urban neighborhood of Victorian rowhomes with bars and frequented houses and alleys. The different bars often have the same regulars but sometimes I go to one and not the others, or to all in one dream. Often after the bars I retire to one of the friend’s houses. In these dreams, some friends from the real world arrive, but most of the characters are recurring dream characters, but the dreams are never the same. The bars and houses often change decor and remodel just as in real life, but remain recognizable. The regular customers often greet me as though I’ve been away for a long time.
The bookshop I worked in for 7 years in my 20s. I regularly re-visit it in dreams, and parts of it are closed off or have been reopened. Sometimes it is thriving and others near decrepit. The employees there are dream employees, never the actual colleagues I worked with. The employees have heard about me and my tenure in this place, or knew someone who worked for me or with me ‘back in the day.’
Schools and classrooms from a variety of teaching positions I’ve held. Often the school is unfamiliar from the real world but the classroom is mine, or vice-versa. These schools maintain their structure but alterations are made each time I visit.
Unconscious to Conscious
Often, I’ll have dreams in these settings for years, and life goes on in these dreams just as life goes on in real life. But many times I don’t remember these dreams or these settings when awake until one sudden vivid dream renders it all conscious, and then I’ll wake and have powerful memories of multiple dreams in this location going back many years. I’ll even note that certain characters in the settings have evolved over time, having matured, or aged, or been sick and healed, etc.
“Deep” Dream Settings
Sometimes my dreams seem to happen concurrently and at different settings at different depths. I used to dream regularly of a world that was a sketch of a place, where everything was black except for silver lines denoting walls and roofs and trees, where the characters were simply lights or silvery profiles. I always knew I had “gone deep” when I dreamt in this setting. But at the same time, a different component of my self would be experiencing a different dream, like a typical work anxiety dream.
The same feeling is associated with strange “temple” dreams I’ve had, situated in stone rooms with baths featuring Egyptian tiles. In such dreams I often found gems or minerals or plants emerging from my skin. These dreams are powerful and come from a place beyond the limits of my own experience in this lifetime.
I’ve occasionally dreamt of a room where several people who’ve been important comrades in this life voyage and I are seated and laughing–and in this dream I know we are all just finished one existence and are preparing/selecting our roles in the next existence. We are joking about who played what role and the decisions they made and their karmic consequences for that individual and the whole group next time round.
Recording Dreams
After a long hiatus, I’ve begun to dream vividly again, and have begun recording them in depth when I can recall them sufficiently. I always feel more alive and more creative and healthy when I have powerful and mysterious dreams. Grateful they are returning.
Have you ever experienced the uncanny? That sudden intense feeling of detachment and dread when an occurrence doesn’t quite fit our rational ideas of what counts as possible or real? During these moments, one is thrust back to early childhood, when the world was imbued with magic and each object and event was a profound and inexplicable mystery.
I’ve had this type of experience many times. Here is the most recent.
My wife and I live in Panama. Panama had a merciless lock-down when COVID started. For nearly 6 months we were stuck in our tiny apartment in a high-rise on the coast in Panama City. I was allowed outside only for an hour a week based on the last digit of my ID card. We could not walk in hallways or stairwells in our apartment building. The city was cordoned off and split into neighborhoods with checkpoints everywhere. If you did not have a salvaconducto saying you were headed to work in an essential capacity for the functioning of society, the police could arrest you and fines were up to $1000.
So, for 6 months we taught from and lived in our tiny place on the 54th floor above the sea. I spent hours on the balcony photographing random things because aside from reading and doing Tai Chi and fooling around and cooking, there was not much else to do.
Casco Viejo, the Amador Causeway, and the Canal from our 54th floor lockdown
When we finally escaped Panama City we did not have a salvaconducto. At the edge of Panama Province there was a police checkpoint where they were sending cars back into the City if the driver could not produce one. We lucked out because a pickup-truck with a bed full of workers pulled up at the other side along with a huge bus and the cops from our side of the checkpoint rushed over to the other side of the highway. I drove through without getting stopped.
Freedom! We drove 6 hours to Cambutal, which is super-remote and undedeveloped. It’s mostly farmland with a jungle down to the beach where a couple hotels and a few small housing developments and restaurants have sprung up. It’s on the Pacific side close to the border with Costa Rica. The beaches in Panama were all closed at the time because of COVID, but in Cambutal there are no police, so we could go to the beach and ride horses and go hiking with no problem.
We stayed in a small compound of cabins built by a young Dane over a couple years. I woke early in the morning one day, perhaps around 5:15, and decided to walk the 400 meters to the beach. My hope was to see sea turtles nesting, or perhaps even more luckily to witness a hatching. I’d seen several baby turtle trails in the sand the day before.
When I got to the beach there were no turtles. The sun was just emerging above the costal hills down to the left. The waves were a dark verdigris and pelicans were skimming the foamy crests looking for food. A young man–the local surf spotter–emerged from his wooden teepee on the beach and started texting the local surfing groups to let them know the conditions.
A few stray dogs I’d already befriended ran over and I played chase and fetch with them for a few minutes, then I decided to walk back to the cabin to see if the wife was awake.
As I walked along the road I felt a strong sensation of alert. My entire spine and in particular the back of my neck started tingling to the point almost of vibration. A mist had arisen from the trees and fields and was moving across the road. The birds which had been cacophonous moments before at dawn were suddenly silent.
Then, a regular and heavy clopping echoed along the road. At first I couldn’t place its origins, as the sound echoed from a hill to my left. Turning in the mist I looked behind me and the vapors parted. In the center of the road to my rear was a white horse, its head lowered menacingly, its eyes fixed intently on me. Its jaw was working as though at an invisible bit. It was one hundred or so meters away. When I turned to look it immediately picked up its pace.
I worked at a horse farm as a very young kid, aged 11 and 12. I know the behavior of horses, and feel fairly comfortable around them. This one wasn’t right. I am not one to panic around animals, even aggressive ones, but as soon as this mysterious apparition picked up its pace I bolted and ran full-tilt. The compound was just ahead and I figured I might have enough time to get inside and evade this creature which would be much faster than I.
I got through the gate at the compound as my pursuer reached me. Our cabin was immediately inside the entrance on the left, seated behind a tall hedge. I got to the hedge entry and behind it just as the horse reared and neighed. Its hooves crashed down through some yellow flowers bordering the hedge and not a meter behind me.
Then, winded, I watched through a gap in the hedge as the horse turned and returned to the road via the gate to continue on its way. Its muscular thighs trembled and shook and its mane was scraggly and covered in burrs as it swung its head around and grunted. I could hear its slow clopping long after it dissolved into the mist.
A bit more than a week later, my wife and I went on a horseback excursion to visit some old petroglyphs carved into ancient rocks. When our horses arrived I saw the one I was to use and thought: “oh, no!”
But it was a lovely day.
returning from our petroglyph excursion along the beach in Cambutal
Yesterday was rainy much of the day, and I was unable to go out and be productive in the garden for the first time in a week. I sat around reading and daydreaming, and at one point a memory hit me.
I have an old dark lavender smoking jacket of high quality make and material. It’s the kind of garment one can rarely wear unless he is a fop or a dandy. I tend toward jeans and T-shirts for the most part, but have worn this jacket over the years to certain events, typically as part of a costume, or to New Year’s parties. When we moved away from the USA 5 years ago, I put the coat in my mother’s house in her guest room closet. I only fetched it last January when we were home for the holidays.
The jacket was given to me by a long-time friend from whom I’ve lately become estranged. He purchased it when he was in the throes of major substance addiction, and gave it to me when he became sober. Ironically, I used to keep illicit substances wrapped in plastic or foil in the pockets of this jacket. This was the memory which suddenly hit me: what if I’d concealed something in those jacket pockets and forgotten? Imagine the situation at customs upon our arrival in France!
Naturally I had to go rummage around in the jacket pockets just to be sure. There was nothing, but while I poked and prodded and carefully probed the pockets both interior and exterior of this old garment, and in between memories both fond and otherwise of the friend who’d gifted it to me, I was hit by a delicious idea for a short story.
I’d not had an idea for a short story in 15 years. I’ve not written one for longer than that. Perhaps my long-dormant muse is awakening?
Yesterday a psychoanalyst from Paris stopped by the Moulin. No, I did not have any sort of crisis requiring intervention by a professional. Rather, she is a board member of several local institutions and is looking for exhibition spaces. She was referred by another local business owner who is a good friend and a swell guy. On her list of wants:
a photographer’s dark room
a space to host an Aikido initiation ceremony
a space for a painting retreat
I showed her our various capacities and explained to her some of our limitations. We can host events like this but our spaces are not quite ‘finished’ and we are only in the process of adding a public restroom to our yoga studio area. She left quite impressed with our building despite its rough state and found it potentially suitable for several things.
We also have a family coming to scout out our garden as a wedding venue. All of this following a brief conversation at the new local coffee joint.
Possibilities swirl, and it’s nice for potential business to come our way without solicitation. But are we ready to host a wedding? Will we have the infrastructure ready? It’s in our business plan to eventually do these sorts of things, but are we allowed to do so under our current entrepreneurial visa, or are we limited to stage one of our plan, which is renting rooms to tourists? We have several things we need to do in order to get ready to do events like this seriously–but we have very limited resources and it will be slow and steady. We were fortunate to find a local contractor who likes to use found objects and recycled materials. He is building our restroom out of old doors and radiators and other stuff we found around the mill!
A final question: How much does one charge for any of these sorts of events? I haven’t the slightest, and we’ve not even really thought about it.
But suddenly we might be in a position where we have to figure it all out. That’s how things grow and happen.
Our lawn from its north end–the Vezere River is to the left, and the canal from the days when our building was a mill runs along the right.
We have 1.6 hectares of land along the Vezere River in Correze. That’s almost exactly 4 acres for those of you across the pond. About 2 acres is a relatively flat lawn, the rest is on very steep hillside including a section of forest.
It takes about 2.5 hours to mow the “lawn” here, which is combination of moss, lichen, weeds, dandelions, and about five different types of grass.
Last Thursday I noted how the bees and butterflies were excitedly flitting around the wildflowers in our yard, and decided not to mow for a couple extra days. Then on Sunday my wife invited a half-dozen people over for an impromptu garden BBQ. It’s really hard for me, raised as I was in the USA, to have an “unkempt” lawn when there are guests over, and as tourist rental hosts, we often have guests!
In the USA, of course, the aesthetic expectations for lawn care are quite rigid. There must be a uniform coverage by one specie of grass, cut short and tended regularly. Any flowers or plants other than that specie of grass must be confined to carefully bordered beds or containers. If there is dandelion, or clover, or crabgrass, or anything else in the lawn, it must be pulled up by the roots or bombarded with chemicals to destroy it. I was indoctrinated as a young man into this way of seeing outdoor living space, and it’s hard to escape those expectations.
But those expectations have nearly eradicated many pollinators and bird populations.
We have a three-tiered veg garden dug into one of the steep hills on our property. I’m allowing the spaces around the veg beds and fruit trees to go nuts.
Our guests at the BBQ were unconcerned that the grass was a bit overgrown and that there were wildflowers and dandelions everywhere. In fact, they marveled at the variety of butterflies and bees. They insisted that I should re-wild large parts of the lawn section of our garden. “Just cut a path around several islands of rewilded earth,” one suggested. Another said “We stopped mowing our lawn at our previous house in France and were amazed at what came up–it was quite lovely without any tending at all.”
So when I finally got around to mowing yesterday, I swerved around large clumps of wildflowers. I cut a few flat sections where we keep tables and chairs for guests, and left a patch of lawn appropriate for lounging on blankets or for a game of soccer/volleyball/what have you. I cut a meandering path around several large islands which I left natural. We will see what comes up.
The bees and butterflies were very happy with the decision. And, after having reduced 2.5 hours of mowing to about 35 minutes–so was I!
These steep hillsides on our property are very difficult to cut–but with all the wildflowers perhaps I should let them go feral?
Mysterium Coniunctionis 