Being and Seeing

Living in a new place sends us spinning out into the countryside every chance we can. It’s fun to just get lost and see where we end up, and of course, along the way we see everything from the grand scale of the countryside to small notes of momentary significance. That’s part of the pleasure of being and seeing in a new place.

On the road to St. Remy this wall of of sunny stone holds a procession of London Plane trees, pruned in the manner of this part of France, which is always astonishing to see given how they reach and swirl their limbs toward the sunlight, and they never fail to make me gasp at their powerful forms. As I came to a halt at the light it seemed as if everything there pinged a red note at the same moment, and then we moved on.

While waiting for lunch in a restaurant in St. Remy, I watched the play of light on the wall nearby, the kind of distraction that comes when you are ready to order and the waiter is lingering elsewhere. Moments like this you could call, ‘filler moments’, my eyes wandering over everything looking for some hook to catch my attention, and often the most unexpected things call out to me. In this case the projections from a leaded glass window tumbled over the geometrics of the window frame which itself sat near an elegant old radiator.

When these kinds of collisions happen I always try to make something out of them, try to see in a different way, it’s more like play really as I juggle the elements in the frame to see how long I can stay interested. Sometimes it is just an exercise and leads nowhere, and other times a fresh breeze blows through my mind.