I had a bialy with low-fat
cream cheese and an iced coffee
and a grilled chicken sandwich
and a small salad and a Coke
and an iced tea and some
nuts and Cheese Nips and two Molsons
and half a charred salmon,
a dozen steamers and three more Molsons.
8/17
I had an English muffin and
coffee and some corn flakes
and a fish fillet sandwich
with chips and iced tea
and two Molsons, a Saranac
in there somewhere, a Labatt’s
and a grilled chicken sandwich, and later,
a single malt scotch.
8/18
I had a cup of fruit,
coffee, two small
muffins and a tomato juice,
a Killian’s Red and a Molson
with sliced turkey
on a Kaiser roll, chips,
and then a Labatt’s,
two, bread rounds, pâté,
a fillet of beef,
smoked chicken salad
and a kind of fusilli
that I liked, with olives.
A Corona and one
adverb of resignation—
or is it concession?—
nevertheless.
8/19
I had coffee and
shredded wheat and fruit,
an apple turnover and a
half a bagel with cream
cheese and grapefruit
juice, a Killian’s Red, half a
burger, cole slaw and grilled
tuna, a pickle, a pepper,
a slice of watermelon,
a Molson Ale, a Davidson’s
India Pale (local, Glens Falls) and
a share of the chicken chili nacho
appetizer, a Ceasar’s salad with
Gulf shrimp and one notion
of want, nibbled;
a Jameson back in the room.
8/20
I had coffee in the
room, a muffin from
Dave’s, a turkey
sandwich in the van,
three beers at the track,
clam chowder (with reflected cloud),
an iced coffee, another
on the road,
sushi take out,
La Fin du Monde at home, a Molson,
and a half measure of quiet.
8/21
Black coffee at 5 a.m. and orange
sections, a spray of city
horns in the dark, a
Molson, turkey on a roll,
coleslaw and a pickle
and another Molson and
two auxiliary verbs, were and
might, and a crab cake
and a green salad and
two Czech beers, Lobvo,
I think, and a cup of coffee,
and an in-flight snack,
a Stella Artois, two, and
coffee and a fruit cup
and a muffin and a nut roll
and one subordinate
conjunction—until.
22.08.01
I had the ground, finally,
and some coffee
and a Guinness and a
salmon salad
on a baguette with cucumber
and tomato, chips, and Marcel
Broodthaers’s “Casserole and Closed Mussels”
at the Tate Modern,
a Young’s Ordinary Bitter, before
a windlass of jet lag drew it all up
out of me in a Richmond loo, all but for the mussels.
A mug of Earl Grey
to begin again.
23.08.01
I had an orange
juice and black coffee
and brown bread with
marmalade, half a banana,
a Coca-Cola, a bite of
chicken sausage, a pint
of Beck’s and a ham and cheese
sandwich and a Heineken,
a Holsten Pilsner, some
hummus, a potato
soup and a Moretti’s,
a slice of pizza and
a crab and papaya
salad, gelato and
espresso, one call home,
a fainting regret and
a finger of single
malt scotch.
24.08.01
I never went from
boy to man. I ran
along the Thames, was stranded by the tide,
had coffee and brown
bread and marmalade,
a Braeburn apple,
and a cup of tea, a
bottle of Beck’s, a
mature cheddar salad
sandwich and a
Boddington’s Bitter and
another adverb of
concession, however,
and a thought about the
various models of my youth.
Rocket and parmesan salad
and baked red snapper
and glasses of Côte Tariquet,
three, and a dessert
of traditional trifle
and a port wine and
a glass of Beck’s at
the Roebuck and a
Wild Grouse taken with
a twist of irregular verbs—
speak, speed, spell, spend, spill—
and a crowning
subordinate conjunction—
as soon as.
25.08.01
I shunned shall in
favor of will and had
tea and toast and then
coffee and juice; I dragged
to the post
and wrote a note home,
happy that my eldest son
might settle, and had a
frothy English coffee and
everyone else seemed taken ill.
By swings and roundabouts
had a pint of Carling
and a bag of crisps
in the Gatwick Dickens, and
shrugged off a harmony
of tenses from the crew.
I had a chicken salad
bloomer, the rest of
my crisps and a Coke
with lemon and ice from
the flight attendant,
Helen Wright, and ground again.
I had a sweet
“bon soir”
from a late-night Lisette
with an Opel, ma voiture, awaiting,
and later, a Kronenbourg
line called 1664
(“seize cent soixante-quatre,” poor)
and cold chicken, green salad,
grapes and a delicious
camembert, courtesy
of our friends, the Kleins.
Août 26
PETIT CASINO
BIENVENUE CHEZ PETIT CASINO
30140 ANDUZE
TEL: 04 66 61 91 83
6OEUFS MOYEN 8.66F
PISTACH CASI 20.03F
CONF CO 370G 11.87F
6OEUFS MOYEN 8.66F
TUILES PIZZA 6.82F
P H 6 RLX 15.28F
BIERE BLONDE 28.93F
BIER.DELIRU 45.27F
3 x 15.09F
LIQUIDES 19.60 % 28.00F
CONTREX 6XIL 17.38F
FRUITS/LEGUMES 5.50% 13.80F
FRUITS/LEGUMES 5.50 % 11.40F
MOUCHOIR CO 9.12F
SPAGHETTI 7.67F
YA.NATUREX4 6.56F
CHEVRE 2000 14.69F
CAMEMB.CASIN 11.41F
LIQUIDES 19.60 % 28.00F
=TOTAL (20) 294.45F=
=TOTAL EURO 44.89=
(1 EURO = 6.559570 Francs)
ESPECES (FRF) 294.45
MONTANT EURO 44.89
001/ 1 /26/08/2001/10:35:18
Numero de Ticket : 009634
“Yet
probably my favorite works
of Marcel’s are the
mussel shell pieces, like the
ones where the shells heap
up beyond the confines
of their cooking pots and
the lids sit on top. Mussel shells
are not a common material
in America.”
“Thus the pieces
stand in gegensatz
zu diem ‘internationalen
stil’ der meisten Pop-,
Minimal- und Konzept-
Kunstwerke. I’m glad of
that. Marcel has written
poems about mussels
revealing the kind of
complex symbologies
he imbues them with,
but in these works they
can simply be seen as
a material of which there
is ‘too much’ of,” writes Mike Kelley.
Août 27
À six heures,
the sprinkler starts,
out of the dead, still
silence of a countryside
asleep—endormie?—
wick, wick, wick, wick, wick, wick,
accompanied by the low
bass hum of the pump
beneath the house. The sky,
she brightens.
L’oiseau. Le coq. It’s
6:30 now in Langue d’Oc,
a region named for a language,
Occitain, once spoken by the troubadours.
I have black coffee
and croissants, still
warm, from Monoblet,
a small mountain town, all limestone
and tawny faces. When
will I be
what I’ve become? Ham,
bleu cheese, baguette,
Leffe Blonde and straw-
berries. Un
Blanche de Bruge,
deux, in Uzes, and
one pang of regret: I pass on
“La petite peinture” box, complete
with tiny easel, straight edge,
compass, affixed
palette and booklet of
sample sketches and
instructions in French
for mixing colors—at 650 francs
I think it too much at an antique
shop. A misstep.
Storm coming and
energies seem to gather toward
the present, longer than
the little now or even the longer
“maintenant”, the kind
of present that is a presence,
a weather, a condition.
What kind of present lasts
forever? Je ne sais pas mois…
I had
Cuisse de Canard, confit aux
Cèpes et Filet de Merou, sauce
aux crevettes et un Kronenbourg, deux,
et cognac et sorbet citron.
Hail falls, fell; clear,
cleared. Jameson on
a terrace, the moon—
à minuit—half, and
yellow. Bonne nuit.
Août 28
I had a long
run in the morning,
out at sunrise
to Durfort, down a
winding lane, through a
vineyard, to an
abandoned stone house
or barn; within,
old, heavy wine bottles
and pieces of farm
implements–I think
of the David Smith “Agricola” I saw at the Tate.
On the back
of the wooden
door, in chalk,
a scribbled date–
“Lundi 11 Novembre 1910”–
I’ve come 46 years and
forty-six hundred miles to
read a simple text
with my birthday in it.
Prefigure of the Armistice, too,
eight years later.
I had black coffee
and a croissant and
plain yoghurt with
slices of peaches and
a tall glass of
eau minerale. Am I in love
with le conditionel—
Je finirais, I
would finish, or should I now
vow Je finirai, I will?
The usual dejeuner—
ham and goat cheese
on a baguette, and
a bottle of Leffe Blonde,
some cornichons, solid
later summer heat, too
much of it (to eat).
A couple of Heinekens
on the Cevennes steam train (train à vapeur),
and my first son has found
an apartment in the Bronx.
I had salade
anchois l'orientale and
truite aux amandes,
Le Zenith, a vin du pays from
Mas Pigné, 1997,
made in the nearby medieval village
of Sauve. I have
several small bottles of
Seize Cent Soixante Quatre, poor,
but as usual, colder
than le vin.
Août 29
There is a castle ruin
above the little village
of Fressac, which dates from the 1200s
(signs say Chateau 13eme).
It was built by the Cathar heretics,
as were many others in the region,
as a refuge from crusaders
bent on their slaughter. The Cathars
(from the Greek “Kathari” or “pure ones”)
were obsessed with a fear
of evil, and sought to free
man from the material world, restoring
him to a divine purity. They
believed that God reigned over the spiritual world
of beauty and light
and that Satan ruled the world
of things, and that it was by some
satanic ruse that man was trapped
in materiality. This idea
for the Cathars
had a fateful implication: that Christ,
word made flesh,
was not divine.
Pope Innocent III preached the first
crusade, Gregory IX
mopped up. Could no one
see that spirit is revealed in things?
For example,
Paul Cezanne is on the
100 franc note.
I had the usual
foods, washed down
by black coffee, Belgian ales,
and muscadet. I’m hungry
for mussels.
Talking today to Robert at
Mas Pigné, his vineyard and
winery in Sauve—we drank his wine last night—
he gives a tour.
A tall Hungarian (I ask him)
with a build and face like
the late Irish actor Robert Shaw,
fit, in his 50s, in shorts
and sporting a British-accented
English, he tells us first off
that he does not make wine,
the wine makes itself. This he has
said a thousand times, perhaps,
but his eyes are convincing.
He takes us into la salle du cuvaison,
where the seven varietals of Mas Pigné–
merlot, syrah, grenache, aramon, cinsault, ugni blanc, roussanne—
handpicked, are fermented, aged and bottled. I am thinking,
spirit is the stuff of stuff and place.
“These are the wines of Langue d'Oc,” says Robert.
“Our job is to stay out
of the way.”
I love the Garrigue, too,
the name of the particular region
of the Langue d'Oc
we are in, and the last name
of a fine poet, Jean, born
Gertrude Garrigus in Evansville, who
loved Yeats, as I love
the fading sunlight on the masonry
wall beyond the kitchen,
and the splay of vines there that map
a yearning. A
large bottle of Leffe Blonde
stares at me. I snake-charm
its contents into me.
Août 30
At dawn, a dream.
I am signing the guest book
at a friend’s art show
and someone else has
written, “I didn't get
the sushi piece at all
and something-something-something
doesn't rate as art.”
I notice as I sign my name
that I’ve added
an adverbial suffix to mon prénom—
Michael become Michaelly—and figure,
well, that’s the standard
for a dream.
Off to Nîmes today,
to Carré d’Art,
Sir Norman Foster’s
musée in the old city. It is
stunning—glass
and steel, full of sky and light,
drinking in the amazingly preserved Roman temple
from about 5 A.D. across the street
and framing it; and the current show,
a collaboration
between Bruno Carbonnet and
Christophe Cuzin,
plays with the notion of
houses, flowers,
skies and windows
[“contre-plaqué, placoplâtre,
verre et acrylique”].
Lunch in a courtyard (mussels) after, but
is Michaelly really Mike Kelley?
Skipping dinner ce soir.
As the sun ducks behind
a cloud to the west, the
air cools a few degrees, you
can feel it, and a wind,
slowly, insistently, fills
these trees, holm-oaks and
mulberries, and the grasses—
wild thyme, lavender, rock rose and rice straw—
swoon.
Août 31
I dream you are in
Albany, with your father,
who is not well. There
is a lot of press around.
You are staying with
a friend, perhaps
my cousin Danny—
or now you maybe know his wife, Eileen,
or someone else I vaguely know. You say
bitterly that we will be going there
a lot, won’t we. There is
a general pronomial confusion
throughout the night.
In some morning
the square window to
our sleeping room is pure silver,
and the air slinks in,
cool and shy and silent,
a lover without a tongue.
“Les Vitraux”
L’art due XXeme siècle a donné à notre église un certain climat, privilégiant la lumière, la couleur plus que la forme. Les pierres vénérables prennent des tons d’une richesse inouie d’ors, de rubis, de lapiz lazzuli. Claude Viallat le créateur, a très bien traduit dans son oeuvre la clarté mouvante du soleil. Bernard Dhonneur, maître verrier, a utilisé une technique nouvelle: les vitraux sont réalisés en verre soufflé à la bouche. Les verres sont colorés au moment de la fusion avec un ajout d'une couche d’émail coloré sur un support blanc, après une étude en atelier, en étroite collaboration avec Claude Vialllat.
Claude Viallat est né en 1936 à Nîmes. Lors de ses études, il a découvert Matisse, l'abstraction américaine, et a développé un art abstrait critiquant le statur traditonnel du tableau. En 1966 il inaugure durant l'été tout son travail à venir: avec les premières toiles libres sans châssis, il adopte une forme, “trouvée” par accident, rappelant un haricot, qui deviendra emblématique de son art. Depuis, cette empreinte caractéristique, ni géométrique, ni organique, est répétée a l’identique sur toute la surface de ses oeuvres. Sa recherche sur les supports l’amène à travailler sur des bâches, souvent de grand format, ou toute autre texture, de préférence usagée et réputée non picturale (parasols ou stores, sacs de jute, habits…). Il en déconstruit alors l’espace par l’emploi répété et systématique de cette forme, en jouant de la polychromie, des coutures, de la complexité de la découpe, et des motifs trouvés sur ces supports variés. En 1993 il obtient le Grand Prix nationale de peinture.
Pour l’église Notre-Dame-des-Sablons, clasée monument historique, Claude Viallat a conçu 31 vitraux, repartis en rosace et fenêtres. Ils sont réalisés par le maître verrier Bernard Dhonneur, ils comportent plusiers couleurs dans l’epaisseur, leurs formes êtant obtenues par gravure à l’acide et l’ensemble relié par des résines acoustiques. L’emploi de grands volumes avec des nuances dans les couleurs et la matière a permis de serrer au plus près la pensée de l’artiste.
Lake George—London—Langue d’Oc