“Maestro, your sketchbook is ruined...let me help you!”
I was overcome by my own weakness, by the ugliness of my bony legs. It’s true I’m an old man!
August 20, ’18
Sometimes France becomes alive—not in the geographic sense: it comes alive as a fresco of bogged willows, a row of pencil-pointed cypress, a field of yellow rye, a woodland village, a pagan altar, a tired bridge, a flock of charcoal ravens ...these are the enchantment, along with August cicadas and August storms.
Swans and cygnets are also there, and a knight in armor!
I stand at my studio window: there, below me, stretches the garden and the garden leads to the woodland and just inside the first fringe of trees is a stag.
From the château I watch the blue water of the Loire flowing by; the blue water changes to grey: the Seine.
I taste the antique taste of time and illusion: my telescope focuses on wayfarers: I see them in mirrors: years of princes, priests, soldiers, artists.
Maturina is Italy: toothless, sickly, yet eager to carry-on! Smiling, smelling of grease and herbs, she offers me her famous soup, her haricot beans, her red jam, her Vinci cheese.