Monday, August 24, 2015
Reading of the foiled attack on the Brussels-Paris train, I can only feel sad to think of the future attempts that may not be as readily foiled. I will be driving to Paris rather than taking the train this time --a decision I reached long before Sunday's incident-- but now there is one more reason to justify the decision. How many people like myself will decide that they will only travel by car, as trains and buses have become "soft targets"?
The weather has turned cool, and tonight's sky --rust red and slate grey-- is spectacular, and a reminder that summer is truly ending.
Outside my back window about 30 minutes ago, I heard the sound of a buzz saw and looked out my window. It was Pierre, the young neo-ruralien who grows his own vegetables on the abandoned land in the crevasse by the old walls of the village of Caunes. His Brittany spaniel, Timmy, a skinny thing, was tied to his old blue station wagon by a thick rope, also navy blue. I pursed my lips together and made "smooching" sounds out the window on seeing the dog, who turned his head this way and that, until he realized the sound was coming from my window.
I put on a jacket and shoes and left the house and headed for where Pierre's car was parked , with Beau in tow. Pierre came up a few minutes later and we chatted briefly. He grows vegetables all year round, as the climate is mild enough. Which is good, because Pierre lives on next to nothing. He tells me his Tinny has something wrong with his ear, but I daren't say anything about offering to pay for the dog to be seen by my veterinarian: Pierre won't even accept my offer to watch Tinny when he has to leave him at home because he can't bring him to the vineyards when he works bringing in the harvest. He lives in a basement underneath the building that houses the boulangerie, and I get the sense he didn't really want me to know that. He has chosen to live as he does rather than live outside Paris, where he was raised and where his family still lives. I see him at Mass at Notre Dame du Cros sometimes, a tall, blonde, slender young man with brilliant blue eyes. When I look at him sometimes he seems a big mad, a deeply tanned creature of the forest, slashing the shrubbery as he was doing tonight in pursuit of some unattainable, prelapsarian ideal.
***
Speaking of the pursuit of ideals, the circus has come to Caunes, Cirque Caprani, a small affair featuring a mottled brown and white horse, a black and white cow and an assortment of yappy dogs. They were in Villegly, the next village towards Carcassonne, last night and are going to be in Caunes for only one night, tomorrow evening. The show begins at 6:00 p.m., so it is definitely going to be for young children, but I might go, if they'll allow me to bring Beau. I would like him to see the show --I wonder what he would make of the dog tricks.
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