You are on the dedicated site for my four novels and seven of my short stories. My web log begins here also, today. To the cheering crowd awaiting this auspicious grand opening I say ‘welcome home.’
First, this is where I am. At home. I sit writing the first entry of my virgin blog in my study in an old house on a hillside overlooking a small valley in southwest France. I am situated in a rural French commune of a very few farmers and a good number of nuns. Most recently a place increasing with new households of younger families who live in small quickly built houses, the adults commuting for sustenance to the factories and offices of the regional big city, Toulouse. That’s a drive of 45 minutes or so. Seemingly quite near but a continent away in the local mind.
My house is called ‘Les Izards’ which is said to mean something like ‘the clearing’ in Occitan our old languagethat was formerly spoken by some people but now seems reserved for dogs and cattle.
The house is a very long narrow stone building, two stories, with a large porch on one end and a bookend covered area at the other where the front door is and where the cars are parked. Les Izards sits on a small shelf of land half way up a steep hill that is half covered in a small forest of large, ancient green oaks. The rest in an expanse of dense brush. The house sits alone facing south, placed whenever by whomever built it to catch maxiumum light on its front.
I have no idea how old this habitation might be. The structure is said to be about 250 years old, and probably incorporates far older elements, some stones for certain.
But there is more, according to the French national survey map directly adjoining the plot where the house stands is an area where evidence of paleolithic human habitation has been found. There are more of these sites as well in the valley below.
The ground floor of this house has ceilings 12 feet high. The walls are at least three feet of stone, in places more than that. The ground floor windows are very tall and narrow, each protected by tough thick wooden shutters. The ceilings are wood supported by massive beams. Floors are tiles.
Second floor is quite different. A somewhat frail staircase leads uo to bedrooms, with more amenable dimensions in ceiling heights and such.
The downstairs room where I am writing is suffused in light. It is quite large, big as the sum area of a comfortable one bedroom Manhattan apartment. I sit facing a pair of ‘acrylic– on–paper’ paintings by the American artist Robert Sudlow.
The desk is littered with my detritus, much of which relates to my writing, to music, reading and smoking. I smoke a lot. I smoke small Dutch cigars, ‘Panter Minis.’
There is one book. It’s “The War On Heresy—Fath and Power In Medieval Europe.” by R.I. Moore.
I’ve just finished listening to a fabulous performance, on vynl, of Sibelius’ 7th. It is an old scratched record of a performance by Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic.
Next I’m starting a two disc CD collection of some of Tartini’s excellent violin sonatas (not including the Devil’s Trill so over played from out of the large and largely forgotten work of this musical genius).
I highly recommend to all discovering Tartini sonatas and concertos. This one starting is a rare CD that I found many years ago in the tiny gift shop of the Academia in Venice.
Also on my desk is a framed photo of my wife, Marie Claire, who is is French. Beside her I can stare with some ache at my sons, Julien Wesley Bell and Alex Fletcher Bell. Both are grown men. Both now live in far away Oslo, strange as life can become, hence my heart ache.
Feeling how much I love them I at last can understand, even far far too late, how much my parents in turn loved me. And how they must have grieved through my toubled childhood and youth.
I can only be glad they missed my adult years.