between the fountains

 

( a wall in Arles)

 I've had a few more thoughts on radiation.

 Maybe it is all just fine the way it is.

The dinosaurs "naturally" became extinct due to environmental factors. I don't have the statistics but are there many people who are upset that the land isn't awash with Tryannosaurus Rex?

Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, man's self-induced destruction is as "natural" as a collision of comets. Who will be bemoaning our demise? Or perhaps we will eventually mutate into a radiation tolerant species.

This isn't to say that I'm condoning the present financially driven disregard for our exquisite planet. 
These are just thoughts on the topic.

This video is a worth a view.
http://memolition.com/2013/10/16/time-lapse-map-of-every-nuclear-explosion-ever-on-earth/ 

Fountain 17 . ? 31 July

                     I have no idea where Fountain 17 was. no photo. no notes, apart from: "31 July. 17"        scribbled in my notebook.

                                 I was heading north to the Auvergne and Le Puy-en-Valey.

 

  I vaguely have a recollection of something somewhere between 

the massive hands and grapes on the roundabout and the tomb of St Andeol.

                                             


There was a particular patch of about 30 miles that was so ugly that I forgot that I was in my beloved France. Tangles of motorways and flatland along the Rhone, a stench of chemicals, giant electric pylons marching off into the distance,  a nuclear power plant, barking dogs and sadness. A veritable desolate wasteland of dust and despicableness where for a short while I felt that I had lost my soul.


Not surprisingly, I just found this on the Guardian website:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jul/25/nuclear.industry.france

'It feels like a sci-fi film' - accidents tarnish nuclear dream

"I feel as if everything's constantly dirty," Eymard said, her hands deep in soapy lather scrubbing plates.
The view from the house over the fields is dominated by the nearby cooling towers of the Tricastin site, a nuclear power plant run by EDF, the company which is poised to buy British Energy and take control of most UK nuclear stations.
Next to the plant is a nuclear treatment centre run by a subsidiary of Areva, the nuclear group which hopes to design many of the new British reactors. Last month an accident at the treatment centre during a draining operation saw liquid containing untreated uranium overflow out of a faulty tank. About 75kg of uranium seeped into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers which flow into the Rhône. ....French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps...."

Quite worryingly I live not that far from Hinkley Point where the British Government is quite happy to allow EDF and a group of Chinese investors to build another reactor. In this age of mistrust and distrust it is quite interesting to encourage "foreigners" to build something so lethal in this green and pleasant land.  They expect it to take 10 years to complete. So, if I haven't died of radiation related diseases by then, I can go.... hmmm... where I can go that hasn't been poisoned by humans... let me think... umm....well....maybe I might as well just die of a radiation related disease and be done with it. Surely there won't be nuclear power in the next world.

Fountain 16. L' Abbaye Notre-Dame de L' Annonciation 31 July

The monks recommended that I stay the night at the convent where the Benedictine sisters had a guest house.

An exquisitely dear nun greeted me with playful laughter, it was as if she had been waiting years for me and finally I had arrived. Although all the rooms were full she insisted that I stay and that she would find me somewhere to sleep. We wandered down the hallway and up and down the stairs and as we passed each door she would point and smile and announce the nationality of the guests inside. After the room with the Portuguese, we arrived at a cupboard where she dragged out a camp bed which we screeched along the tiles past the room where the Italians were staying to a small conference room. "This will do? Yes?"

                                                        

 My bed.

 It was was phenomenally uncomfortable, but a snug nest compared

 to a night on the plastic chairs at Athens airport.

 People come and stay here for all sorts of reasons. There was the group of Italian girls spending a week working with the nuns in the garden. A Belgian woman who smiled a lot came to walk in the hills. There was the family of a young monk who was taking his vows the next day.

Now, I have always had a fantasy to join a monastery and live in a peaceful community praying, working and studying. It doesn't seem a million miles away from what I already do alone.  (apart from the freedom to take off on a motorbike and a general lack of obedience)

So when I looked dreamily into a rose-tinted future of prayer and simplicity they corrected me with tremendous gravity. "C'est une vie très difficile". And as a mother of a young man, I could feel their worry, their sense of loss as well as their respect for a son who had consciously made an all encompassing commitment.

   

       

Ringing bells for 10 o'clock Mass.

 The church and convent were built 1986-2005 

a half hour walk from the monastery.

The nuns live a cloistered life so when their work demands contact with the public they are separated by a grille. In the convent shop, a nun sat by the till behind bars chatting with a customer. I presented her with my purchase, a cd of traditional French children's songs. For some reason I needed to explain that the cd was a gift for my great nephew in Las Vegas and that as children we sang of these songs. Such as Frere Jacques and Alouette.
 And much to my surprise, for I am not one to burst into song, I began to sing. After one line of missed notes and mispronounced words, she came to the rescue and joined in. Life could not get any more delightfully ironic than this: two women of a certain age, one in her religious habit and the other in her motorcycle leathers singing nursery songs together.
After we exhausted my repertoire I explained how I had met the monks at the fountain the day before. I showed her their photos on my Ipad.  I told her about the water fight and she squealed with delight as she called out their names.

                                      An Italian girl helping to cut the lavender by the car park.

Fountain 14. Abbaye de Sainte Madeleine le Barroux. 30 July

 I met Mariette Oudon while we were both sorting through a mound of enameled holy medals at a stall in the market in Malucene. She complimented my choice, the Virgin Mary on a pale green background, which made her look rather more like a Hindu goddess than the Mother of Jesus. We chatted a bit about holy medals, lighting candles and she urged me to go to the Abbaye, adding, with very sparkling eyes, that they bake the best bread in all of France. We paid for our medals and said a reluctant goodbye. As I stepped away she called out that she would remember me in her prayers.

Abbaye de Sainte Madeleine 

Crickets and lavender and me. 

The car park was "landscaped" like a Californian country club except that it was natural and there were no Mercedes or BMWs. There was only me, Louise and a flock of bees huddling around a dripping tap.

The church was absolutely still. I sat and listened to the blood course through my body and perhaps an hour passed. An older couple opened the north door and the sharp yellow light cut across the floor, the pews and my cheek, blinding me in one eye. I squinted to see their silhouettes: a broad bellied man with thin arms and a tiny woman with close cropped curls. They stood outside looking in, discussing something at length in loud breathy whispers. Their shoes scraped on the gravel underfoot and they let go of the door, returning me to the darkened silence.

Despite the tranquility and timelessness, the monastery is surprisingly new. 

Around 1970 a Benedictine monk pooteled up to the small church of St. Madeleine on his moped

 and was given permission to stay and live a monk's life. A couple days later a young and determined postulant appeared, and within a few months he joined the monk in his programme of prayer and thus the 'community' had begun. 

 Within a year, their numbers had grown to eleven monks and they started to restore a small ruined priory which they quickly outgrew.

 On the 21st of March 1980 they laid the foundation stone on which is engraved the motto of the monastery : Pax in Lumine (Peace in Light). This describes the mission of the monks: "to bring down a little of the peace of heaven." By 2002 there were sixty monks living a cloistered and prayerful existence in this little bit of heaven in the Vaucluse.

According to Benedictine Rule they devote their life to prayer, study and manual labour. Between their prayers, (seven times a day starting at 3:30 am on weekdays and nine times on Sundays) they bake the best bread in France, mill flour, tend vineyards and make wine, build, grow vegetables, keep bees etc.etc etc.

Four times a year the monks go walk about.

I wrote about this already in the August 1st posting.

The monastery can be Googled and youtubed. Moreover, one can download their services, 

sung in Gregorian chant, in real time on the computer or via an app on one's mobile!

My utterly naive and hand flapping amazement seems to indicate that I, 

Ms. Terribly Modern Cosmopolitan Woman, am a total luddite

 while these cloistered men are the ones who are digitally savvy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYRhbvKsCl8

from their website- http://www.barroux.org/

“There is only one problem in the whole world: restoring spiritual sense in people. Shower on them something like a Gregorian chant. ”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Fountain 13. Vaison la Romaine. 29 July

                                                        Bicycle Tree with fruit.

On the road linking Malaucene and Vaison la Romaine is a grand old oak tree dripping with bicycle fruit. Perhaps the seeds were sown by passing cyclists peddling to Mt. Ventoux. 

I almost said that taking this photo was my nearest brush with a car, then I remembered several other near death fountain experiences. Especially the one in Aix. Fortunately it is generally acknowledged that tourists, especially those with a camera, have no fear.

 Vasio Vocontiorum, or Vaison la Romaine to you and I, has been inhabited since the Bronze Age and by the end of 400 bc it was the capital of a Celtic tribe known as the Vocontii. They were later taken over by the Romans who left a mass of ruins, mosaics, a theatre, etc. including a sculpture that is now in the British Museum. After that it was taken over by the various Barbarians: Christians, who used the theatre benches as tombstones, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Clotaire I, the King of the Franks, various bishops and counts whose disputes were settled by Good Pope Clement etc etc. It was then nearly washed away by a flood in 1632 and then by another flood in 1992 which gained it a spot on prime time telly, in Discovery Channel's Destroyed in Seconds.

Whew, and now, all this history is history. Vaison is a gentle place with many tourists, geraniums, art galleries, gem stone shops and the very helpful Willy's Motorcycles where Louise gets new tyres, and more importantly, brakes, while I use their computer to catch up on emails.

                                  
                                  

 

                   Fountain 13 in the vernacular style surmounted with a pineapple.

In the haute ville, where narrow arched ways lean left and right and rough cobbles passively threaten to trip up and twist delicate ankles, the counts made life difficult for the bishops.   

     

Down below, on the other side of the river where the land is flatter, is a large, almost modern square. In the shade: a group of musicians sit with friends and snap open plastic take-away containers of anti-pasti. In the sun: readers tug their shorts higher up their thighs, pull out the bookmark and re- enter their imaginary world. In a dappled light: a toddler makes a beeline to a column of water which rises and falls from a hole in the pavement. Silent and purposeful, she attempts to hold the water down with her foot until her disposable nappy sags and her skin turns blue.

Fountain 12. Place de Charles de Gaulle, Carpentras 28 July

                                                       Place de Charles de Gaulle                   

Sunday.
Bleak as a Lowry painting.

 Hot sun, hot wind.
Empty, apart from a boy in his car with music thumping

through open windows as he braked too hard around a corner.

Obviously, I had completely misread the posters in Malaucene. 

"The Jewish Music Festival" I had come to see wasn't something that was spilling out onto the streets.

 Or advertised in any way in the town, even at the locked tourist office.

 

    Unless, of course, this banner said all that needed to be said and I couldn't read between the lines.


However, I found the flee market which was spread eagled over a long stretch of ground under plane trees which were already dropping their leaves.
It is a gross exaggeration, as I do not have a divine parent nor did I cook my son for dinner, nevertheless, I can appreciate the torments of Tantalus.

 Browsing the vide-greniers with an overladen motorcycle is achingly full of fruitless yearnings.
 A verdigris figure twisted upwards supporting a pair of putti which had been part of a water feature, a red and white striped silk chaise longue, a mountain of white damask curtains, and a weathered, oval gilt mirror with fruit entangled candle sconces were all utterly impossible.  Setting my sights on the realistic, I bought two crucifixes which were encrusted with pale, compacted soil. The vendor had found them in a medieval village using a metal detector. I threaded them on a string and tied them around my neck.

At a table of war memorabilia: unpolished medals, bomb casings, dented helmets, etc. was an enameled box whose insides were speckled like an egg in yellow and green. The man said it was a soldier's lunchbox. After reading so many soldiers' names, sadly the ones who no longer needed a lunchbox, I felt I must rescue this remnant of domesticity and comfort. I studied the scratches made by a fork and the patches where the enamel had been chipped away and tried to imagine how it felt to carry something so dainty when there were bombs going off.
 I made good use of it while traveling. It was the perfect size and shape to be stuffed full of tissue packets which eventually were replaced with newly acquired treasure.

 

             The remaining crucifix, as I lost one of them somewhere along the way, is now polished through constant wear, and reveals the figures which decorate both sides.
And, interestingly, it labels me, rightly or wrongly,

 as I have discovered many times.

 

To get a bit more historical information, I have just googled my very
 special, unique, never been seen before lunchbox,

and you can buy them on e-bay. Or etsy. oh well...

Fountain 11. The Source at Grosseau, at the base of Mont Ventoux. 27 July.

                     This is just for the record. To keep order in my generally asystematic life.

 I have already written a post about this water depot on July 29th, just after I had been there to collect water. I could say the 'been there, done that, got the tee shirt' expression, although I don't know if people still say that anymore. I never have because most things feel far more profound than a simple tee shirt experience.  I did once buy a tee shirt announcing I had "been there". And the there that it was, was the Grand Canyon. I was 19 and it seemed ironic.

Very far into the background on the left you can see a tiny little someone filling their bottles.

St.-Michel-en-Pierre, Malaucene

 

St. Michel from the north

 

The west door.

I know nothing of this door.  

When I first saw it I thought of Nkisi, the figures from the Congo which are inhabited by spirits. As part of the ritual, metal nails are driven into the object as a vow or treaty to protect against evil. I made this mental observation before I knew anything about the church's history. When I discovered its connection with Clement V and the violent dissolution of the Knights Templar it seemed to make some kind of sense.

At 6pm I was shooshed from the church and I retraced my steps towards the fountain. The four women had been joined by a young girl. All eyes were on me, making me nervous and clumsy; I didn't know where to look. I caught the heel of my boot in a small hole and went flying until I landed near the feet of the women.

They leapt up, seized me by the arms and half carried/half dragged me to their bench. They wiped my hands with flowery hankies, dabbed scented water on my face, fanned me with their scarves and smiled glorious white and golden smiles when they saw I hadn't been seriously hurt.

Fountain 9b and 10 Malaucene, 26th July

  Fountain 9b

Oops. The minor classification irregularity is due an error in counting, perhaps because I was outside the butchers and despite the happy fat pig placard, the air had that yellowy-pink, lard and offal aroma that doesn't sit well with vegetarians.

                                                                    Fountain 10

This rather grand lavoir with its classical pediment sits opposite the church of St-Michel-en-Pierre, built in 1309 by Pope Clement V who, like me, enjoyed spending summers in Malaucene. Perhaps he was seeking a diversion from all his problems with the Knights Templar and Philip IV, not to mention his big papal house move from Rome to Avignon.

In a thin strip of shade, four expansive Muslim women sit leaning against the church in that solid, legs apart, two feet squarely on the ground position. Heavy cotton scarves weigh down their heads and they watch my every move. They continue talking, accompanying their words with delicate wrist gestures and readjustments to their scarves. Their eyes follow me as I wait for a gap in the traffic and cross the road. When I am close enough to hear their voices, they go silent. I raise my hand to greet them. "Bonjour" I say with my friendliest smile. They don't know where to look now and like frightened little birds in a nest, their heads bob about searching for anything to fix upon. It feels as if I've done something terribly wrong, made a cross-cultural faux pas that I know nothing about, so I do what I can. I keep on walking.

Fountain 9a La Placette le Francois Brager, Ispagnac. 25th July

  It was such an intimate square that I hesitated before turning into it.
It was full of the midday silence broken only by a thin trickle of water
 from the two water spouts.
On a bench facing the fountain sat three pretty teenaged girls dressed in white.
They appeared quite suddenly as I was parking Louise where she wouldn't topple over
 on the slope and cobbles.
While I was busy with the prerequisites for exploring the village: unzipping the tank bag for my iPad, fountain diary, glass vial, unzipping another pouch for sun cream, peeling off my jacket and running a thin cable lock through the sleeve and fastening it to the handle bars, pulling off my boots and socks and stuffing them under my jacket, slapping on my plimsoles, unrolling my water bottle from its waterproof trousers insulation, stretching my hat into a recognizable shape, they sat like stone.
 The smell of fresh fruity shampoo hummed in the air above their heads.

Les Pieds en l'Air

                                             Les Pieds en l'Air - Ecole du Cirque

According to my favorite astrology book, Sun Sign, Moon Sign by Charles and Suzi Harvey, I "feel that circuses and seances are as essential to a healthy life as three meals a day and eight hours sleep." Too right; not that I often eat three meals a day or get anything near eight hours of sleep. However, I do often go to the circus. (In fact I saw "The Invisible Circus" in Bristol a couple nights ago, which sounds like I should score double points for simultaneity, but they were quite alive and of this world.)

A couple years ago, on my first visit to Malucene and Mt Ventoux, I was only passing through on my way to somewhere further south, a famous place like Avignon or Aix or Arles. On the map it was just another name on my route, not a destination.

The whole town seemed to be hiding somewhere deep in the tunnel of shade created by the plane trees which lined the streets. It felt like nowhere I had been before. It also felt strangely familiar, compelling me to stay, at least for the night.

Under the craggy white shoulder of Mt. Ventoux was the campsite, and next to the campsite was an enormous red circus tent.
 I knew I'd feel at home here.

Inside the hot shadow of the tent children would flip and spin and swing upside down
through the air.
Diabolos leapt off their string, tiny feet manoeuvred an enormous ball and I understood what moved Picasso to create some of his most tender and wistful work.

Picasso's Acrobat on a ball 1905

This summer Malucene was my first 'official' destination.
I met with my circus friend, Stephane, and watched his young acrobats rehearse for the evening's performance. They had grown so much in two years: stature, confidence and skill. I felt proud of them.  They were doing what I had always wanted to do and I felt a little bit sad, because for me, that particular boat has already sailed. Somehow a circus composed of a dozen middle aged neophytes would not have the same appeal.