Betsy’s Dispatch for Lundi, 6-13-11.
I went off to a French lesson with the divine Christophe that people at the Centre Social introduced us to. The alley that leads to him curves down and around past shuttered and barred houses, enticing glimpses into gardens, and into #3 Place De something. We climbed to his study up 4 flights of open stairs with a delicate metal balustrade from which the wood handrail was peeling. He owns the whole building and has his school here: some bedrooms, some big rooms for immersion classes and some smaller offices. We reviewed numbers and going to market, with a concentration on fromage. (cheese). Fromage du Chevre (goat), de la vache ( cow) and du brebis (ewe). He had a large horizontal window looking out on the roofs of the houses in back all clumped together. All of them had the old red and lichen covered clay tiles that intersected in every possible angle. You could see nothing but roofs and some walls. It was very beautiful. I commented how wonderful it was that the houses all had natural colors that fit into the earth. He said regulations require it and pointed out a bit of red on the side of one house, all that was left of a colorful past. I say, Hooray regulations! He thinks Cezanne looked at a lot of views like this one, and developed cubism from them. Why not? As we went down the long street level corridor, he pointed out some places in the stonework where entrances had been filled. These were improvements made during the 100 Years War…
Market Day in Cordes Sur Ciel, Saturday
The O in Cordes is supposed to be pronounced like the A in awful. All OR combinations are. No wonder no one could understand me. Christophe says always keep tension around your mouth. He also says I’m trying too hard.
We bought cheese from two places and I blew my chance to do my morceau un pui trop-piu petite bit. We bought a chicken, expensive and scrawny to my eye. Frank Perdue hasn’t been here to fatten up the hens in cruel and unnatural ways. Perdu means lost, by the way. Hmm. The chicken came with long neck and head cum comb and beak but minus brain, eyes, windpipe and all the rest of the business parts. Postscript: We cooked the chicken and there was lots of juice and NO fat. ) After we spent all our money, we climbed up the hill into the old city. Only photos( not included) could describe the utter exhausting picturesqueness of that place. One more view of house piled on house with shrubs between, window boxes with torrents of red and blue flowers, narrow, mysterious alleys twisting from shadow into light, sudden views out over the valley, and I will shut myself in the armoire for good. We would put the camera away, but then… “OH, look at That!”
The songbirds here are divine too. This noon we were sitting out on the Stone Bench eating our paella from the market. The sun was in and out, a cool breeze. We each had our favorite wine and were commenting on how the birds were quieter in the midi du jour, when one started up in the oaks just below us. The oaks here are a little stumpy and have dark and angular trunks. (See Courbet) The leaves are tiny and in tight clusters so any birds are really hidden. We heard a thrush maybe? He would sing one line- 2 seconds- of burbles and whistles and little filigree turns. Then he would be quiet for 4-6 seconds, and then sing another, different line. He went on and on all through lunch. Other birds would be making little peeps and beeps and chitters, but he knew he was the main event. This is no catbird, there is not that bratty whine that they have. There seem to be a number of birds with varied liquid songs. I saw one this morning with a long tail. Brown Thrasher, maybe? Boris says we may be hearing Rossingols (nightingales). In the evenings and mornings, they really go all out, a competition, maybe? Une Guerre du Joyeuse, peut etre? Thomas Hardy talked of “an aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, of blast be-ruffled plume, (who’d) chosen thus to fling his soul upon the gathering gloom.” Exactly! But more likely fighting over property rights.
Other animals. The night we arrived JP found a little hedgehog face down in the pool. He was one of two babies people had seen here, about the size of a grapefruit with tiny feet and a real boar’s snout in miniature. JP buried him on the crest of the hill beneath an evergreen tree. We saw another one crossing the road on his little feet with a kind of guinea hen quick stride. When JP went to persuade him to move out of danger, he curled up in a ball and rolled off. Carol, you’d adore him. There are also butterflies of black and white and one variety of a heavenly blue. We’ve seen an enormous beetle such as Albrecht Durer painted and billions of tiny grasshoppers littering the roads. I hope they are not waiting for some crop to mature.
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