near and far – lockdown – the 1 km walk

As of early May, we are allowed to walk for an hour or within 1 km from the abode. My usual pace is 4/5kms an hour and rather cheekily I’ve developed a walk in a quadrant that sort of fits the government rules as well as satisfying personal need. We are lucky here as interesting and absorbing walks are possible in all four directions and, as my habit is to look to the distance and so ‘far’, as well as to plants at close quarters, and so ‘near’, then I thought to catalogue an easy and favourite walk to look back at in the future. Out of the village to the east on Chemin des Rosiers/Chemin des Huguenots before moving south through the vineyards and noting on the verge Gladiolus (above) which I think is G.illyricus as against G. byzantinus and just a single clump. Plenty of Lathyrus clymenum (below), a member of the pea family, clambers wherever possible . . .

. . . from here the view to the village acros cereals and vines through the late morning haze. And then turning 180 degrees to view the statuesque fig orchards where foliage and fruit have suffered recent cold temperatures resulting in a late show . . .

. . . the elder (Sambucus) is very floriferous this year so opening up for gallons of elderflower cordial while, low down, clover romps attractively along the ground.

The old mill was accessible four years ago but now just a landmark slowly disappearing and seemingly going to sleep under encroaching ivy. However, it is here that the orchestra, chorus and prima donnas fill the air – frogs, woodpeckers, nightingales – a big presence this year – and hoopoes create the musical cloud around and overhead while below there is scuttling in the bottom of the hedges and a fluttering higher up. Stand and listen . . .

. . . unassuming dogwood flowers now and the view to the village is framed with dwarf oak. Onward down to the river Tave – more a stream here – the track is sheltered and shaded with overhanging branches of ash, walnut, alder and poplars . . .

. . . it’s a delightful track and very welcome after the open areas in full sun. Onwards to the west and the banks supporting the fields are full of a country style mix of coquelicots et chardons – early summer is sublime n’est-ce-pas?

Retuning up to the north and views in the distance of the village and church – and then the place, or the square filled with plane trees, empty now but maybe soon – filled with folks – where I live (house in background) and home again but off out again tomorrow.

On lockdown, I’m back reading One Art Elizabeth Bishop Letters, for possibly the fifth or sixth time – I love her work. And her fragility is so close. EB revered Marianne Moore having met her in her early 20’s while she was at Vassar and the friendship and mentorship continued for decades. I find M Moore’s poetry challenging on the academic level but revere it and the fascination remains. So:

is some such word

as the chord

Brahms had heard

from a bird,

sung down near the root of the throat:

it’s the downy little woodpecker

spiralling a tree –

up up up like mercury:

 

a not long

sparrow-song

of hayseed

magnitude –

a tuned reticence with rigour

from strength at the source. Propriety is

Bach’s Solfegietto-

harmonica and basso.

 

The fish-spine

on firs, on

somber trees

by the sea’s

walls of wave-worn rock – have it; and

a moonbow and Bach’s cheerful firmness

in a minor key

It’s an owl – and – a – pussy –

 

both –  content

agreement.

Come, come. It’s

mixed with wits;

it’s not a graceful sadness. It’s

resistance with bent head, like foxtail

millet’s. Brahms and Bach,

no; Bach and Brahms. To thank Bach

 

for his song

first, is wrong.

Pardon me;

both are the

unintentional pansy – face

uncursed by self – inspection; blackened

because born that way. Marianne Moore  Propriety

 

 

 

 

ville et campagne

Ville – Arles; appreciating a sculpture by Marc Nucera – elegant but purposeful and somehow wistful –  in front of the Chapelle de Méjan. Then on to the Foundation Vincent Van Gogh  . . .

. . . where the courtyard displays a feature bursting with colour and water.

Inside, one of the exhibitions is Soleil Chaud, Soleil Tardif. Les Modernes Indomptés. Vincent’s railway carriages with other works showing the influence of Millet and Monticelli; some Calder patterns; Polke’s work well lit.

Metaphors of the sun, Mediterranean region and experimentation from Modernists and Post Modernists. Joan Mitchell’s Sunflowers . .

. . . and No Birds. Also de Chirico and videos of performances by Sun Ra alongside vibrant LP covers – those were the days.

Later works from Picasso: Man playing the Guitar and Old Man Sitting.

Upstairs in the original rooms . . .

. . . an exhibition of an English Modernist, Paul Nash, curated as Eléments Lumineux –  “works imbued with a surreal atmosphere and a sense of the finite, against a background of death and war”(catalogue).

From the roof terrace, a well manged parthenocissus clings to the walls of a secret courtyard. And out into Place du Forum to gaze upwards.

Ville – Nimes; banks of Cistus monspeliensis flowering with panache alongside Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle.

Campagne – Anduze. La Bambouseraie en Cévennes a couple of weeks ago with wisteria in full bloom – heavenly scent – Davidia in discreet bloom and the final flowers on Akebia quinata and  so final whiff of chocolate.

from a previous visit

The Mind is a wonderful Thing  Marianne Moore

is an enchanted thing
like the glaze on a
katydid-wing
subdivided by sun
till the nettings are legion.
Like Giesking playing Scarltti;

like the apteryx-awl
as a beak, or the
kiwi’s rain-shawl
of haired feathers, the mind
feeling its way as though blind,
walks along with its eyes on the ground.

It has memory’s ear
that can hear without
having to hear.
Like the gyroscope’s fall,
truly equivocal
because trued by regnant certainty,

it is a power of strong enchantment. It
is like the dove-
neck animated by
sun; it is memory’s eye;
it’s conscientious inconsistency.

It tears off the veil; tears
the temptation, the
mist the heart wears,
from its eyes – if the heart
has a face; it takes apart
dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s

iridescence; in the inconsistencies
of Scarlatti.
Unconfusion submits
its confusion to proof; it’s
not a Herod’s oath that cannot change.

 

 

art on show – large space + small space – Château la Coste + Max Sauze garden

Richard Serra – an installation, a sculpture, a site specific sculpture – at Chateau la Coste to be viewed and interacted with on the Art and Arhcitecture walk around the domain. Seemingly I just snap away at things I like nowadays . . .

. . . remnants of the old farming estate have been kept such as the threshing floor outside a new chapel which I didn’t photograph.  A more interesting building ‘Four Cubes to Contemplate our Environment- a maze like structure from Tadao Ando. A palimpsest of translucent layers/facades offering plenty to absorb and think about  . . .

. . . on the way down to The Meditation Bell.

The Oak Room (Andy Goldsworthy), outside above and inside below, caught the imagination of the kids.

Big names here – Gehry, Ando, Bourgeois, Benech, Sigimoto – in this large glamorous and glossy winery vineyard cafe dining shop gallery space ‘art escape’.  Most likely the Ai Weiwei ‘Mountains and Seas’ might have flown away as my visit was some time ago . . . but I remember the very very beautiful work.

By contrast, also near Aix en Provence, a jardin remarquable, in a small town – Éguilles. Max and Anne Sauze have created somehing special in a relatively small space around one lone tree. Now there’s more and consequently increased shade and lots of bamboo. Max, the master of metal, is also a master of arrangements, of collections . . .

. . . and of pleating paper. All objets are recycled and put together to form whimsical and quirky and thought provoking ‘things’.

Mostly site specific and crossing from design to architeture to horticulture but intensely personal.

In every corner and on all surfaces, he can’t stop himself – thank goodness.

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician–
nor is it valid
to discriminate against ‘business documents and

school-books’; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
‘literalists of
the imagination’–above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them’, shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry. Marianne Moore   Poetry 

town and country

The Wednesday morning market in Place aux Herbes in Uzès displays many produits du terroirs, regional products and specialties. It’s a more compact affair, so easier to negotiate and altogether a more satisfying experience than the Saurday jamboree. Now, in winter, the architecture lining the narrow emptier streets is also easier to appreciate – stand back, look up and admire.

Look across, breathe in and admire here too, south of the town, in the Gorges du Gardon. Ferula stems of last year’s plants still stand tall although brittle and with a feeling of just about hanging on . . .

. . . the Gard flowing from the west into a horse shoe curve and then bending out again to the east and on under Pont du Gard until it slips into the Rhone, I’ve posted about about this much loved walk previously .  . . .

. . . the winter sun highlights details like the dried fruits on the elder and the new growth of ferula . . .

From this panorama point le point de vue des castellas, a man made cave is visible used by the rock climbers who hang disjointedly like Looby Loo all along the south facing aspect.

The interior of the cave required a figure for purposes of scale but the view from this point was safer sans figure.

Neraby at the Galerie Marina, glimpses of the countryside still in skeletal mode  . . .

. . . and inside with Robert Lobet and inspirational work.

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather
than
an asset – that in view of the fact that spirit creates form
we are justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the
unit, stiff and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and
liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to
attempt through sheer
reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from
observation, is idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are
brilliant, it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing
of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus
thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere
perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the
elements, or mildew;
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance
without co-ordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-
membered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you. Marianne Moore Roses Only

 

 

the pier – sad to see you leave

We are having a ‘new’ pier and word has it that the bent + distorted constructions at the far end of the burnt out structure are being dismantled this week. So maybe the last chance to appreciate the old lady? or chap? Do piers have genders attached? Whatever, this one has become an old friend.  This is what happened to three years ago.

Low tide offers an opportunity to view a close quarters – not only the old supports but also the new steel work. The bones are revealed in all their honest geometric beauty like open rooms . . .

. . .  and the the forms that shape the underskirts around the straight legs  . . .

. . . are continuously washed and refreshed and wrapped with living things as well as dead detritus.

Moving away across the slippery mud to note the activities of a few . . .

. . . and vacant items awaiting use. Even out of use this broken pier affects many folks here.

If you will tell me why the fen

appears impassable, I then

will tell you why I think that I

can get across it if I try. Marianne Moore I may, I might, I must