Please join me and Mocha on our walk around the village this afternoon.
Along the footpath between le Barri and le Bouysset. C D B ?The new owners have cleaned up the area behind a house along the path.This is part of a ruin that now has a sign on it saying it will soon be renovated.A lovely old garden gate in le BouyssetI know this valerian is an invasive plant but it’s so beautiful!Poppies root anywhere. The walls in Cordes have lots of these arches built into them.
Now I’ve come round the west end of the village. This is the guardian of a garage, I think.
Abandoned gardens like this one aren’t uncommon.
Heading down the north side now.
I’m walking on footpaths mostly.
It’s high rose season now.
Almost home now. The cat disappeared when he sensed Mocha coming.
And look! Henri IV is in his place waiting for us again.
This morning we welcomed a new member to our French conversation class, Samaher Alqadi, whose documentary, “As I Want” is beginning the film festival circuit now. Here’s the trailer:
And here’s a short interview with Samaher:
Then, the end of our conversation, another participant shared this recently released music video, filmed in Cordes:
A few weeks ago my Facebook account was hacked. It wasn’t the ordinary kind of hack where someone (or something) sends lewd pictures to your friends via Messenger. Instead someone used my account to post something so egregious that Facebook immediately shut down my account for violation of terms of service. I was told my account was restricted for thirty days and a Facebook bot wrote to me to acknowledge that I’d been hacked, but a few days later, a picture I posted on Instagram showed up on Facebook, and I found I was able to post.
This is the image I posted on Instagram.
I thought the issue had been resolved until a couple days ago when I received an email from Facebook telling me that my $250 limit on paying for ads automatically had been reached. It turned out that my Mama Ganache ad account was attached my private Facebook account and that when we turned over the Mama Ganache page to the new owners, the ad account remained in my name.
Now someone had ordered $2000 worth of ads. If I hadn’t had a limit on automatic payments, the whole amount would have been withdrawn. I immediately wrote to Facebook, deleted the fake admin on my ad account, changed my passwords on my account, my PayPal account and my bank account, reduced the limit on automatic payments to $2 (the lowest I could), and removed all viable payment methods from my Facebook account. I wanted to close the ad account entirely, but the restrictions on my account didn’t allow me to do that.
The next morning I saw that the $250 had been refunded to my bank account through PayPal, and I closed my Facebook account.
I’ll miss Facebook. There are lots of people I kept in touch with there that I won’t be in contact with now. And even though I can’t deny its dark shadow, the connections I’ve made on social media, many on Facebook, have enriched my life. Cartoons on Facebook made me laugh, I mourned friends’ losses and cheered their successes. I used the local buy, sell, trade site, and I connected with neighbors. Facebook offered me a window into the lives of dear friends and relatives I rarely see, and resources for news I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.
My mentor, Alice O. Howell, loved social media. Though Facebook gained prominence late in her life, she embraced it. The Internet was part of the Age of Aquarius, she used to explain, because Aquarius is an air sign depicted by the symbol of waves. She was thrilled to see electronic communication blossom.
I may open a new Facebook page in time. But for now, I’ll be posting here more often, though – if the ex-president’s blog is anything to go by – a blog will never have the same impact or response of a Facebook post.
All the same, here’s a window into my life over the past couple weeks:
The name of the street on which Tom and I (and Mocha and Henri IV) live is called Rue de l’Acampadou, which we’ve been told means something like “between the fields and the town.” Our neighborhood is called Quartier du Barri. Opposite our house is a low wall and the stairs to our garden.
Below that, almost all the way down to the stream, L’Aurasse, is a wooded hillside.
Our house is blocked by trees in this picture, but you can see Simone’s house with the blue shutters next door.
When we first came to Cordes, we walked along the road below our house and tried to come up the hillside on some overgrown footpaths. Mocha was so covered in burrs and sticky seeds when we came home from that walk that we stuck to better maintained paths for a good year and a half after that.
One day during last spring’s confinement, I discovered that the paths on our hillside had been cleared. I went down a set of formerly bramble-covered stone stairs just up from our house and found that there was a maze of cleared paths zigzagging up and down the hill in broad sloping swaths.
Some of the paths were left narrow. I preferred those to the wide ones at first.
Mocha and I began to explore the maze of paths. I was surprised at how wide most of them were, as wide as roads. Over the summer, you could hear the noise of brush cutters as the village cleared more and more.
It was a dry summer. The cut grass lay on the dusty pathways. I took Mocha along the paths but all I saw was the wildlife cover that was gone. The paths made me sad.
Then fall came and it began to rain, and the paths became beautiful grassy walkways. I read somewhere that they have a name, Les Terrasses du Barri, and I realized that they were indeed terraces, and no doubt very ancient.
Now that we’re in the second confinement, which limits walking for exercise to one kilometer from home, I’m realizing what an extraordinary treasure is across the street from our house.
Mocha enjoys being off leash.Sunset is our favorite time to go You can see how they zigzag here. At the top a house on rue de l’Acampadou is peeking through.There are a few landmarks. This spring is running now. It’s just off a a small meadow with rock I like to sit on to meditate.There are a number of very big trees like this ash that I like to lean on and look up.This structure was part of the Medieval Festival a few years ago. Wood was stored in it and burned in the small building next to it to demonstrate how charcoal was traditionally made.
The woods are full of foods, like these wild plums, and medicinals waiting to be gathered.RosehipsFigsNettleAnd blackberries.It’s the end of our walk, but Mocha thinks there are still interesting things to see. Tomorrow, Mocha.
The number of coincidences, through people I’ve met, books I’ve read, the information that has come to me unbidden—or only bidden in thought— as I’ve been doing the research for Two Suitcases was already extraordinary when we met Monique Lagard a few days ago, courtesy of Montalbanais friends, Ian and Janet Milligan.Â
I love seeing the trees and bushes without leaves.
J’aime voir les arbres et les buissons sans feuilles.
We took long walks with the dog. One day, I noticed hyacinths in bud in front of a neighbor’s house. It happens, our neighbor said, but then it gets very, very cold again, and the buds never bloom.
It was about then that a fortunate thing happened. We’d wondered who the abandoned garden across the street from our house belonged to, and had asked around before we left for California. We could look over the wall and see that, though largely covered in brush, it looked like there there were fruit trees, a chicken coop, and maybe a well.
Travelling for so long – we’d left Cordes in mid-October for Morocco, stayed four weeks, returning for only a couple, before our time in California – I was longing for roots. As I fell asleep in all those different beds, I’d imagine asking for permission to use that garden: cleaning it up, pruning the trees, digging over the beds and planting vegetables and flowers, and maybe even having a few chickens.
Our neighbors, Dominique and Lucie, were kind enough to keep Mocha for us while we were gone. A week or so after we came back, we invited them over for dinner. To our delight, Dominique told us the garden belonged to Lucette, who passed away three years ago, and whose house was maintained by her children, though they rarely use it. Coincidentally, they were there that weekend.
After four weeks in Morocco, outside the Schengen area, Tom and I were home in Cordes-sur-Ciel for two delicious, story-filled weeks. How that place fills my heart!
The view from our bedroom
Walking to the hardware store
My reading place
Full moon over Porte de la Jane
A garden gate in Quartier du Bouisset, Cordes
A drive-through bakery in Albi. Only in France.Our first Thanksgiving in CordesThe vibrant Christmas Market in Toulouse
We visited the market just before the yellow vest movement ruined it, disappointing holiday shoppers and devastating the vendors, many of whom depend on the holiday season to pay the whole year’s bills.
The yellow vests have legitimate complaints. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Surely change is needed – indeed it is upon us in full force – but I grew up in a mom and pop store, and I just spent several years pouring heart and soul into Mama Ganache. I feel for those vendors who just lost the years’ profits. A peaceful vigil would not have caught the attention of the world, but violence is not the answer.
Saying goodbye to Cordes. Mocha is staying with neighbors.
The next steps in our long term visa and my Austrian citizenship process required flying back to California, also outside the Schengen Area. We spent the holidays with beloved family and friends.
Pismo PierVisiting Eva and her new brother NoahDecorating the Christmas tree in BerkeleyThe beginning of a gingerbread HogwartsFluffy sunning in Josephine and Frank’s gardenSanta Maria BBQ for lunch with Tom’s familyA Danish lunch in Solvang Almost ready for Christmas dinner at Joanne’sChristmas lobster!Relaxing at our Airbnb. At last!
Cordes-sur-Ciel was built as a safe haven for people who lost their homes in the nearby city of Saint Marcel, which was razed during the Albigensian Crusade. Said to be the first of the bastides, it has five walls built in concentric circles.
(More about the history of Cordes-sur-Ciel can be found here.)
A neighbor recently told us that the stone wall across from our home is the unfinished fifth wall. Indeed, our house is just below the Porte de l’Horloge, the eastern entrance to the medieval city, which is in the fourth wall, built between the 14th and 16th century. Our neighborhood, quartier du Barri, is a 17th century suburb of the medieval village.
Cordes sits on a rocky outcropping, and is entirely built of local stone: limestone, sandstone, and dolomite. The houses are stone and the streets in the medieval village are cobbled. Walls surround every garden and line every street.
There are walls upon walls upon walls.
Living without a car gives me plenty of time to appreciate stone walls all around. One of the most delightful things about Cordes is its authenticity: it looks like and is a place that has been continually inhabited since the 13th century. The walls reflect its history.
They bring me peace, connectedness, and a sense of stability. They are the keepers of the stories.
I never tire of their variety, their richness, their complexity.
In a village of art, the stone walls are perhaps the greatest art.
Most mornings I wake up before sunrise, open the shutters, roll out my rug and light a candle, and then do some stretches, breathe, and meditate for a while. When I open my eyes, the sun is up – or on its way up – and the view is so lovely, I try to save it in a photo.
These are some of the morning pictures I’ve taken. They begin in early August. The last one was taken this morning, the first day of fall.