two autumn leaves
Everyone is in bed and I take my chair out to the middle of the plum-bright vines. I face the Ventoux and meditate. I hear birdsong everywhere and the red vine trucks start up like prehistoric cicadas. After about 20 minutes, a warm tail curls around my bare leg - my very own furry gong. Slowly I open my eyes and I see Oscar, Manon and Julian standing near. My family are welcoming me in to a new day of seasonal blushing.
Cleaning terra cotta tiles this afternoon and baking like a good loaf in the aubergine and pumpkin heat; scraping away dust and cement and polishing up the blood red grooves, black runnels and pink pock marks of a life already trodden; preparing the hearty ochre slabs to receive the footsteps of our life and laying each individual tommette in the sun to dry. As I work I am listening to Joni Mitchell on my ipod. 'Woman of Heart and Mind' drives through my mournful veins like wine through the dry Sangre de Cristo mountains.
An old boyfriend told me once that this song reminded him of me.
'I am a woman of heart and mind
With time on her hands
No child to raise....
He knew something then that I am only just starting to feel.
posted by ruth at 5:59 PM
8 Comments:
Joni Mitchell does that to one's psyche... I know the song well.
yep Deb, Joni's been everywhere with me!
The light shining through and on the leaves in the top photo is wonderful.
And what a wonderful thing to be, a woman of heart and mind. It's getting the two to live together in harmony that occasionally is tricky..
HI! First, Michele sent me. Lastly, I have loved Joni Mitchell for years. I just wish she'd give up smoking. A very worldly woman with a lot to say and very inspiring--especially with self-discovery. My late buddy was from France. I've linked your cool site. Cheers!
hi michael, and thanks for stopping by. Joni still has an amazing voice...AND she found her long lost daughter, so I guess if she enjoys a smoke who are we to tell her no?!
thans mary - i was thinking more along the lines of no child to raise, but hopefully one day i will be a woman of heart and mind too, especially as i have time on my hands....
"All this talk about holiness now --
Must be the start of the latest style..."
Thank God for Mitchell, keeping me faintly honest through the years :-)
I wish I could touch those ceramic tiles! They're lovely.
..... there's a lyric in there for everyone dale. How about when youre on tour:
I've got a blue motel room
with a blue bedspread
I've got the blues
inside and outside my head
will you still love me
when i get back to town?
my did she understand what it is lke to be away from home
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