Provence
So, it was all there on that first day: a canvas of infinite subtlety, complexity and history, which yet gave the appearance of simplicity. Like Racine we, too, noticed the cicadas and their legendary tendency to stop rubbing their legs together during the national lunch break, from twelve to two every afternoon. A walk to the mini-market at the camping site was an adventure in a new universe of odours: garlic, olive oil, wine, French fries. The olfactory and aesthetic references expanded greatly when we took a drive to the nearest village: fennel, dry pine, wild flowers of the undergrowth on the approach; in the cool of a village shop with massive stone walls, a stone bowl of patchouli strategically placed; houses bordered with cypress and pink laurel; a tiny restaurant with gay table cloths on which the olive oil, the bread basket, tomato, garlic and a stone jar of fresh water had already been placed. When we moved to a camping site near the sea, we found a land which in most respects had not changed since Van Gogh described it to Theo: it’s too beautiful…sunsets of pale orange turn the land blue…yellow suns hover over Provençal orchards with a monstrous gaiety…the sea is the color of mackerel, which is to say changeable, one never knows if it is green or violet, one never knows if it is blue, because the light changes in seconds and can take on a grey or rose tint. I still remember the pine forest next to the camp, the knotted trunks of the olives bowed in the direction of the mistral and the great, Cézannesque blocks of white stone that poked through the earth.