On Monday, as the rumors of martial law and curfews began to percolate through the disquietude of social media into mainstream assertions of what was coming, our roofers worked through the occasional gusts of wind and rain in an effort to finish the house by mid-week.
That night, Macron gave what almost certainly will be regarded as the most important and successful speech of his career. War, he said, is upon us. And as with all wars, we must sacrifice. And sacrifice equally. The next morning, the roofers arrived and continued, relishing the best weather we’ve had for working amidst slate and shear geometries. We smiled at one another, joked about the new rules, but stood a little further apart, drank our coffee a little quieter, and parted at the end of the day more somber than expected.
The restaurants, the bars, the places of conviviality and celebration that are such the regular heartbeat of the country, have been closed for a couple of weeks already. Now, confined to our homes and to our patches of land, legally and morally cut-off from our friends, and families, and neighbors, required to travel only for necessity, and then only with a document attesting to our purpose and our identity (and of course this being France, our honor), we cook, we work on things left undone, and we wait with the rest of the world to see what comes next.
In the countryside of course, social distancing is a habit of sorts anyway. So many of us live and work apart from others, our hands in the soil and our place in the world are own, that a meter or two apart when talking over a fence or across the lane, isn’t hard. But we do like to talk, and particularly at the market, a lot.
There, watching today, as two elderly men approached one another, deep smiles in their eyes, and then a flicker as both began to shift their trajectory, the necessary ‘bonjours’ lost in the trigonometry and physics of bodies coming to rest. Apart. Safe. Hopefully.
A group of three women talking about China, and how well they’d managed to slow and maybe even stop the virus. And how strict they had to be. And how maybe that’s what France needs as well. In every word, and mirrored on the faces of those of us listening, a grim sense of maybe. A recognition of something new giving rebirth to something old, that maybe what we’ve all become and the world we’ve built to enable it, isn’t the right—or good—way to live. That maybe we’ve been fooling ourselves. That transcendence is a dream.
Charlemagne The Cat, here on his first—and as it turns out, extended—visit, is discovering…well almost everything he could hope for. Grass sun-dried and wet with dew, plants with leaves smooth and crinkly, birds that sing and squawk, stone walls that smell of who-knows-but-it’s-fascinating, and the warmth of a cast-iron stove on a cold night (particularly with a soft couch nearby). The neighbor cats—experienced denizens of the country life—are somewhat less thrilling, although trans-species social distancing seems to be at play. At least for now. We’re well stocked with food and wine, with much to keep us occupied. It may not be enough. For any of us. And that too, helps shape the days.
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