MONACO IS A GARDEN

Monaco is not a town

it is secretly a garden,

interwoven with some buildings.

...

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NOTES FROM MY DIARY

I never knew I cared so much about clothing, until I left to Europe with only two tops, one pair of pants, two thermal leggings, a jacket and hat and one pair of snuggly winter boots.

Those clothes, they sheltered me through the Icelandic gales, and the Finnish nights, and the Croatian Bura, and all manner of other harsh winter weather. I am endlessly grateful for merino and those beautiful wooly sheep of my homelands, for they have saved my life many times over.

I loved the freedom of not caring - the muddy feet, tangled mermaid hair, and the mornings when I wouldn't have to change at all - staying in my rumpled sleeping warmth till the sun came up, and jackets came off.

But at a certain point I just felt that I needed MORE than practicality...
I need expression!
I need sensuality!

...

Oliver and I left to travel Europe in search of our own limits as humans. We wanted to know how far we could go, and how little we could live without. This experiential experiment was one of the greatest moves I have ever made. I found that I need very little in life, that I can live in any form of shelter, as long as I am warm enough, (and sometimes I can live with no shelter at all). I found that I do not need over than half my belongings - and I gave these away. But I still need healthful, nourishing food and good books. I found that, above all, I value company. I had always thought I was a lonely person, and happy with it. But loneliness, true loneliness was tough, and I longed for human connections. Oliver felt this way too, and we were most blissful when we made friendships with special souls on the road, or during those random moments of interaction with some interesting human being.

But never did I think that I would miss my clothing.

I have conflicting sets of paradigms, when it comes to clothing - on the one hand I used to pour myself into books about fashions; from the Sumerians to the Victorians, I loved it all. From the age of twelve I dreamt of studying fashion, and at age 18 I followed my dreams, for a short while.

However, there was also that part of me that read Buddhist books cover to cover, soaking in the words of wise sages who spoke of sacrificing all material possessions. In many ways, I thought, and still think, there is a point to this. That possessions are not where we can place our happiness, like eggs in a basket. That they are empty and meaningless, until we give them meaning.

But then I decided to go and test these words and ideas, before taking them for granted. I felt I needed to know for myself. I wanted to find the edges of my being - who I am, what I am made of, what I need, and what I want.

For so long I had been ignoring this last one: what I want.

I thought, "who cares what I want, when there are so many 'should's' in this world." I thought only of what I 'should' want... Traveling in austerity stopped me in my tracks, as I realised the importance of my own desires. I began to listen in on myself... slowly, slowly, learning from my own body and mind. For some reason, perhaps because of what I have seen around me, thought I 'should' want a life of extremes: eco living, off grid, need no showers, forage and grow, never shop at supermarkets - that kind of thing. I tried on other lifestyles like people try on shoes. Slowly, I was learning... I wanted showers, and more than that I wanted baths. I wanted cleanliness. I wanted very little possessions, but for those possessions that I do own to be loved, well worn, useful and beautiful. I wanted to shop for food. I wanted a place to grow food too. I wanted creature comforts. I wanted less work hours, more time for hobbies, especially reading and writing. I wanted to travel. And I wanted nice clothes!

My desires change, they are fluid like water, not as constant as my needs, but they are still important. They speak to the parts of me that have formed around my world like a vine searching for sun - I could stay small and survive close to the ground, or I could look at the other plants and copy how they have grown... but I choose not to. Instead I am following my sun's light.

...

In Monaco we bought new clothes: cotton shirts to let the breeze in, soft on skin, and new shoes to run with, and shorts and pants that let the sun touch our winter bruised legs. My boots were caked in mud, totally worn and cracked through, smelly and old, they reminded me of all the beautiful memories I had been through. But I gave them up, making room for the new: new meaningful items, new expressions of self.

I felt like a Spring lamb

in a garden of clover!

“What have you been doing poet since you left us
Your sun is still here in Monaco
It almost knows Italian I looked for you on the terraces because they
were full of light
And the train whistled and stopped and you didn’t get off and the terraces
grew very sad
What I am writing comes from the Earth stems of tropical flowers
fireworks from nature poems from the Earth...
”

— ALBERT-BIROT

THE VERDON GORGE

A PILGRIMAGE INTO NATURE

I guess I could call this whole trip a pilgrimage - a long series of journeys to various sacred destinations.

The places I hold sacred are mainly of the Earth: walls of stone, pillars of wood, holy waters lapping at the shore or coursing through the jungle. My temples are often outside.

But here, in the mountains of France, I felt a stirring in my soul, as I walked up the steps to a physical, brick and mortar kind of temple.

The path was rocky, laid out in huge slabs that force your feet to pause as they try and negotiate the jumble of surfaces. I was walking slowly, stopping to look out over the village and valley, or to nod a hello to the statues of Mary on my way up. Several times I bent down to inspect a patch of unruly grape hyacinths, growing from the cracks.

Up there I could hear the cry of an eagle from far above.

At the top of the stair was an opening onto a patio, at the end of which sat a huge, heavy-set wooden door, inlaid and worked with delicate features that belied the weight of the whole thing. It was the door to a church. The door was closed and locked, but the whole affair made an impression on me... the walk, the tiny chapel with its beautiful gateway like a portal into the mountains.

There is something about this mixing of human sacred spaces with Earthly sacred spaces that I love.

I soaked in my surroundings as if I was drinking from an oasis.

That bliss stayed with me all throughout our little pilgrimage in the mountains... over pass, under tunnel, on the crazy roads, in the olive groves and on the cliff's edges... I couldn't stop grinning!

...

PROVENCE

THROUGH THE EYES OF VAN GOGH

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My dear sister,

If I didn’t write to you quickly this Sunday morning while the canvases I’ve begun are drying a little in the sun, I would wait even longer to answer your kind letter.

I’ve just finished a landscape of an olive grove with grey foliage more or less like that of the willows, their cast shadows violet on the sun-drenched sand. Then yet another that depicts a field of yellowing wheat surrounded by brambles and green bushes. At the end of the field a little pink house with a tall and dark cypress tree that stands out against the distant purplish and bluish hills, and against a forget-me-not blue sky streaked with pink whose pure tones contrast with the already heavy, scorched ears, whose tones are as warm as the crust of a loaf of bread.

I have yet another in which a field of wheat on the slope of the hills is completely ravaged and knocked to the ground by a downpour, and which is drenched by the torrential shower.

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Willemien van Gogh
Date: 16 June 1889

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From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Willemien van Gogh
Date: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 2 July 1889

My dear sister,

In recent days I already began another letter in reply to yours, but I became aware that I didn’t have sufficient mastery of my mind to write.

I’m quite absorbed in reading the Shakespeare that Theo sent me here, where at last I’ll have the calm necessary to do a little more difficult reading. I’ve first taken the kings series, of which I’ve already read Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and a part of Henry VI – as these dramas were the most unfamiliar to me. Have you ever read King Lear? But anyway, I think I shan’t urge you too much to read such dramatic books when I myself, returning from this reading, am always obliged to go and gaze at a blade of grass, a pine-tree branch, an ear of wheat, to calm myself.

So if you want to do as artists do, gaze upon the white and red poppies with the bluish leaves, with those buds raising themselves up on stems with gracious curves. The hours of trouble and battle will assuredly come and find us without our going to look for them.

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Dear Mother,

If you say that you’re a mother approaching 70 then it must be true, but one would certainly not tell it from your writing, for it struck me that it’s exceptionally firm

It occurs to me that in the summer here it’s not much hotter than at home as regards being bothered by it, since the air here is clearer and purer. What’s more, we very often have a strong wind, the mistral. I’ve painted in the wheatfields during the hottest part of the day without it bothering me much. But one can sometimes see that the sun can be quite strong from the way the wheat turns yellow quickly.

There are very beautiful fields of olive trees here, which are grey and silvery in leaf like pollard willows. 

Then I never tire of the blue sky. One never sees buckwheat or rapeseed here, and generally speaking there’s rather less variety than at home. And I’d so much like to paint a field of buckwheat in flower or rapeseed in flower, or flax. But I’ll probably find the opportunity to do it later in Normandy or Brittany. Then here one also never sees the mossy peasant roofs on the barns or cottages like at home, and no oak coppices and no spurry and no beech hedges with their red-brown leaves and whitish tangled old stems.

Also no proper heathland and no birches, which were so beautiful in Nuenen.

But what are beautiful in the south are the vineyards, where they’re on the flat land or the hillsides. I’ve seen it, and come to that sent Theo a painting of it, where a vineyard is all purple, crimson and yellow and green and violet like the Virginia creeper in Holland. I like to see a vineyard as much as a wheatfield. Then the hills here, full of thyme and other aromatic plants, are very beautiful, and because of the clarity of the air one can see from the heights so much further than at home.

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Anna van Gogh-Carbentus
Date: approx. 8 - 12 July 1889

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