Mid november

It snowed in my backyard today.

The old lady and the old man

At the village supermarket, if there's an old lady behind you with a single article in her hand, don't bother offering her to go ahead of you because she's already handed her item to the cashier. It's done so naturally that you can't seem to think it should've happened any other way.
There's also this old guy who comes around just to check what's in your cart and what's in the store. He'll actually stand in line with no items in hand and wait for his turn (or something). Today i saw him walk down the road and flick a dead leaf with his cane; he looked so angry at the leaf that he must've used all of his strength to move it out of his way. Who knew an old man's irascibility could stem from one red dried dead leaf.

Carcassonne's fancy bookstore

A quiet saturday afternoon in the garrigue

San Francisco: an eighteen year old young man gets shot by a fifteen year old teenager because he isn't going down the escalator fast enough.

Olonzac: vide-greniers (the organized garage sale)

the 1€ stack of 70's cocktail cards.




The one euro Dallas 45 rpm.
I found the soundtrack (french version) to Dallas, in the smallest village in the south of France.
Dallas, one of the many american t.v series that played on french televison. Also the only t.v series translated into french, on moroccan televison in 1979; the one that i would go check out at my girlfriends' when i was 8 years old. My two girlfriends and i played grown ups (my mama's high heels did a lot of back and forth to the candy store) and we'd name ourselves after the texan characters.
When he was a little boy, my friend Patrice got denied his "Dallas" night out at his friend's for having been naughty. He had a fit in his backyard, wearing only his underpants. So gay.
The american soap opera pop culture has left an indelible print on the french mentality; a lot of the later shows such as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Sex and the City have inspired lower middle class french housewives in the naming of their offspring. The names of some of today's teenagers are the scarlet letters of their mother's addiction.
If you meet a girl named Sarah or Jennifer while visiting France, there's a chance her mother was watching t.v between 1 and 3pm.

French cats

French cats aren't picky.
Soon, the one that's been hiding in the garden and that we've all been feeding unbeknownst to each other will have a seat at the dining table and his own napkin ring. But maybe he'll explode before that, he's probably over a month old and his belly's way larger than his head -shouldn't it be the other way around at that age?
They eat the stinky stuff (cat food) and the good stuff too: saffron rice, green beans, pimientos, mussels, gambas and calamaris (and yes, should you ask, that was paella we fed them.)
They like cheese too (french cats fer sure), steamed potatoes, walnuts... What else have we been feeding those creatures... Expired dairy (still edible though, wouldn't want to get them sick) and we'll come up with new ideas that will keep us astonished in seeing what a cat will actually eat.

10 days later...
They eat lentils too (actually it was lentil soup so that means that they also ate celery, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, paprika and cumin), green peas, raw eggs...

Way later...
Broccoli. The kitty's way bigger, he has a big belly and a round head. His eyes look like marbles, he's round all over, he reminds me of an owl.

A month later...
They eat cauliflower too.
The kitty's legs seem too short—his belly brushes the ground.

Sanctuary

There's a red marble quarry right above the village,
A 40 min walk from our house.
It's an amazingly peaceful place at dusk.
The three of us left alone in a vast, silent pink pit until the sun had set,
Feeling like time had stopped for a precious moment.