sacred geography

Picnic on the edge of a volcano – a dream

Eve Neuhaus 4 Comments


Un pique-nique au bord d’un volcan : un rêve



I’m walking up a high hill with a group of friends, all of us carrying baskets. When the path spirals round to the top, I can see that the hill is a volcano, but it’s an inactive one, its crater a gentle dip soft with grass. More people are coming up the path and joining those already spreading blankets and tablecloths on the ground along the rim of the crater.


Je gravis une haute colline avec un groupe d’amis, et nous portons tous des paniers. Lorsque le sentier serpente jusqu’au sommet, je constate que la colline est un volcan, mais inactif : son cratère forme un léger creux recouvert d’herbe. D’autres personnes remontent le sentier et rejoignent celles qui sont déjà en train d’étaler des couvertures et des nappes sur le sol, le long du bord du cratère.

It’s my job to feed them all. There is a huge cauldron filled with something warm. I supervise some women friends who are ladling the soup (or stew?) into smaller cauldrons, which we then take around the circle to fill each of the picnickers’ bowls.


C’est à moi de les nourrir tous. Il y a un immense chaudron rempli d’un plat chaud. Je supervise quelques amies qui servent la soupe (ou le ragoût ?) à la louche dans des chaudrons plus petits, que nous faisons ensuite circuler pour remplir les bols de chacun des pique-niqueurs.

The mood is benign, cheerful, almost ebullient, though we’re all aware that it’s a volcano we’re sitting around.

L’ambiance est sereine, joyeuse, presque exubérante, même si nous sommes tous conscients que nous sommes assis au pied d’un volcan.

When I wake up, the sky is yellow gray with smoke from the wildfires all over southern Europe, savage wildfires as close as an hour’s drive from our little haven on a hill, Cordes-sur-Ciel. Tom is coughing. We barely glance at the news—it’s too apocalyptic.

À mon réveil, le ciel est d’un gris jaunâtre, chargé de la fumée des incendies qui ravagent tout le sud de l’Europe, des incendies dévastateurs qui font rage à peine à une heure de route de notre petit havre de paix perché sur une colline, à Cordes-sur-Ciel. Tom tousse. Nous jetons à peine un coup d’œil aux informations : c’est trop apocalyptique.

The waking world is falling into chaos. It’s fortunate that the fire nearest our place is contained, but the sister of a friend’s family has been evacuated from a much worse fire a four hour drive from here. Climate change is everywhere, we are in our sixth week of relentless heat, the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine continue, and there are more earthquakes and erupting volcanoes along the Ring of Fire every day. Not to mention the political situation.

Le monde réel sombre dans le chaos. Heureusement, l’incendie le plus proche de chez nous est maîtrisé, mais la sœur d’un ami a dû être évacuée en raison d’un incendie bien plus grave, à quatre heures de route d’ici. Le changement climatique est omniprésent : nous en sommes à notre sixième semaine de chaleur accablante, les guerres au Moyen-Orient et en Ukraine se poursuivent, et les tremblements de terre et les éruptions volcaniques se multiplient chaque jour le long de la Ceinture de feu. Sans parler de la situation politique.

Yet Tom and I just returned from a few idyllic days in Amsterdam with family. The skies were blue and temperatures were well below the searing ones we’re enduring here.

Pourtant, Tom et moi venons tout juste de rentrer d’un séjour idyllique de quelques jours à Amsterdam en famille. Le ciel était bleu et les températures bien inférieures à celles, caniculaires, que nous subissons ici.

We were indeed picnicking on the rim of the volcano.

Nous étions effectivement en train de pique-niquer au bord du cratère du volcan.

The geometry of the dream bears further examination. There is the hill, the same one I’ve been climbing in my dreams for as long as I can remember. (I write about the series in another blog Spiral dream: Redemption, written a few years ago). At the top of the hill, there is a round indentation, grassy, but similar in form to the spring at the center of the women in white I saw in the vision which I describe in the blog called A Drop of Love, and like the spring, it is surrounded by people. In the vision, the other women and I are meditating while a battle goes on around us. In this dream, both men and women are sitting on the volcano’s rim, and the battle going on around us isn’t evident, though it’s glaring in the waking world.

La géométrie de ce rêve mérite d’être examinée de plus près. Il y a cette colline, celle-là même que je gravis dans mes rêves depuis aussi longtemps que je me souvienne. (J’ai évoqué cette série dans un autre blog intitulé « Spiral Dream: Redemption », rédigé il y a quelques années). Au sommet de la colline, il y a un creux arrondi, recouvert d’herbe, mais dont la forme rappelle celle de la source au centre des femmes en blanc que j’ai vues dans la vision que je décris dans le blog intitulé « Une goutte d’amour » ; et tout comme la source, ce creux est entouré de gens. Dans cette vision, les autres femmes et moi-même méditons tandis qu’une bataille fait rage autour de nous. Dans ce rêve, hommes et femmes sont assis sur le bord du volcan, et la bataille qui fait rage autour de nous n’est pas évidente, bien qu’elle soit flagrante dans le monde éveillé.

Symbols of the Feminine abound: the crater, the cauldrons, the bowls. We women are providing nourishment to the community.

Les symboles du féminin abondent : le cratère, les chaudrons, les bols. Nous, les femmes, nourrissons la communauté.

If the message of the vision, which I refer to fondly as “my dickhead vision,” is that women need to hold the center during period of chaos by remaining calm and focused on the deeper world, the message of this dream is that we also need to be of service by providing sustenance.

Si le message de cette vision, que j’appelle affectueusement « ma vision de con », est que les femmes doivent garder leur équilibre en période de chaos en restant calmes et concentrées sur le monde intérieur, le message de ce rêve est quant à lui que nous devons également nous mettre au service des autres en leur apportant le réconfort nécessaire.

That volcano doesn’t look like it’s about to erupt in my personal dream world, but I’d be a fool to think it’s just a hill.

Dans l’univers onirique qui m’est propre, ce volcan ne semble pas sur le point d’entrer en éruption, mais je serais bien bête de croire qu’il ne s’agit que d’une simple colline.

Get your cauldrons ready, my women friends. There will be work to do.

Préparez vos chaudrons, mes amies. Il y aura du travail à faire.

When the fog freezes: Cordes in the winter

Eve Neuhaus 10 Comments

Once in a while, the fog that rises from the valleys surrounding Cordes-sur-Ciel freezes.

Overnight the dense cloud that made driving so difficult the night before becomes a delicate crystalline web, clinging to the edges of every leaf, every branch.

It’s magic.

This morning we walked to the le Grain de Sel, the chalky outcropping you can see from our street.

It’s a short but steep climb to walk there from our house, but you can drive up past it and take a flat path too.

Wishing you all a year filled with glimmers of hope, fresh insights, many moments of pure joy and raucous laughter, and at least a few of breathtaking awe.

Les Terrasses du Barri

Eve Neuhaus 8 Comments
In French and Occitane

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.
Rosehips
Figs
Nettle
And blackberries.
It’s the end of our walk, but Mocha thinks there are still interesting things to see.
Tomorrow, Mocha.

Living in Cordes – Stone walls

Eve Neuhaus 16 Comments

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.

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There are walls upon walls upon walls.

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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.

 

Om is Home

Eve Neuhaus 8 Comments

Ganesh Baba used to say that. Such a delightful aphorism – so full of broad and deep meaning.

To me, it means wherever you are is exactly the right place for you to be. The central secret is at your center. The treasure is buried in your own garden.

We didn’t move. Tom and I are still living in the same house, and working at the same business, Mama Ganache. The house, in my mind all ready to be someone else’s, wanted to be ours a little longer. Everything seemed to be in place, and I’d done all kinds of symbolic, metaphoric, ritual,  and inner work around letting go—I even led the session called “Letting Go” in a Year-to-Live class I co-teach—but the fates had it that we’re here, at home again.

It’s a fortunate thing, although fraught with difficulties and very hard work. This house is filled with light and beauty. And now it’s clean and repaired! What a gift!

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During the weeks the house was on the market and the first few after, I was tired and depressed and sick. Not all at once. Yeah, all at once.

Still, underneath all that physical, biological and psychological stress, I managed to retain a small, frequently imperceptible, sense that everything was going to be alright. It’s true I was wearing my little ceramic disk that says THIS TOO SHALL PASS, which always helps, but it was the way life itself unfolded that gave me the message most profoundly.

The very moment Tom and I decided that we would stay here, a text arrived from a friend, who had another friend, who was in need of a furnished room or two. Our new housemate moved in an hour later. Best housemate we’ve ever had. It would have been enough.

Events had almost inevitably been turns for the worse over the weeks before that. Things broke down, big things, the water heater, the sewage pump, the washer, all within a short time. The toilet overflowed and needed to be replaced when Airbnb guests were here. Everything took forever and cost too much. Then, in a flash, a helpful, upbeat, mature, and kind housemate moves in.

A week later, Mama Ganache lost both of its weekday shop employees at the same time, and it became clear to me that I should step back into the business. So here I am, Mama Ganache again.

I spent the last month on a new website: mama-ganache.com. I set up a chocolate club and free delivery service to hospitals and nursing homes. Tom and I are hosting two weekly events at the shop, a tea on Sundays, and a conversation on Thursday afternoons. We’re hosting two parties a month, Art after Dark on first Fridays, and the chocolate club pick-up party on second Fridays. I’ve been crazy busy.

In the middle of all that, Eva came on Thursday last week. She and I already have a long relationship with hummingbirds, so I knew the hummingbird who flew into the living room just before Luana dropped her off, had some message for me.

It was another rufous hummingbird, West Coast parallel to the ruby-throated hummingbird. It was trying frantically to fly out of the window above the dog’s bed. Lily Bear thought it was very exciting indeed, but she backed off when I asked her to. Almost immediately the bird fell, stunned, onto the window sill. When I tried to lift it up gently, it awoke and dashed into the upper corner of the window again. In my hand were three tiny hummingbird feathers.

As I stared at them, astonished, the bird fell again, very nearly into my open hands. This time I could lift it and carry it outdoors. I put it in a flower box and went to get a succulent leaf to make a sun shield for it.

When I came back with the leaf, the hummingbird looked at me with one eye and took off, circling around once and then landing high in the oak tree.

The feathers must have slid out of my hand when I put the bird in the flower box.

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I picked them up and put them in a special box. Hummingbird feathers, so tiny, so exquisite. Extraordinary.

These are hard times. The large, slow-moving astrological configuration (Uranus/Pluto) that’s been putting so many obstacles, small and large, in my path, will affect us all in one way or another. But surely something bigger is afoot, or, perhaps I should say, in the air.