When I checked into my room at the Hotel Colbert
in Avignon earlier this month and opened my suitcase to unpack, I found a few
things had gotten wet from the rain that morning. One was my nightgown which I simply hung in
the shower to dry. Another was more of a
problem – it was my copy of The Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell, an
out-of-print book, one of two books that I had brought along for my week’s
reading material (Inspector Maigret escaped dry). The worst was my soggy bookmark.
It may sound unimportant to you, but I’ve been
using the same book mark for many years.
In fact, it didn’t start life as a bookmark but as a postcard and came
to me either by chance or by divine intervention in a used copy of an Inspector
Maigret paperback that I bought years ago in Berkeley at Black Oak Books. I’ve been using it for at least 13
years. The image is a vintage black and
white photo, somewhat blurred, of a person with an umbrella, walking in the
rain, passing by a Citroen 2CV. It’s by
Sabine Weiss and is titled 2 CV A Paris, 1957.
I don’t care that it’s become ragged at its edges and that I’ve had to
make minor repairs with scotch tape. It’s
what I’ve been marking pages with for as long as I can remember, and it’s
important to me, and it was wet.
The hotel provided a hairdryer in the bathroom, so
I gave my beloved 2CV postcard some gentle heat treatment and leaned it up
against the wall to dry thoroughly. But
just in case, I set off for a little shop I know that sells an interesting
array of prints and cards. Maybe I could
find its duplicate?
My shop had no Citroens modern or vintage. But they did have some interesting cards
including one smashing black and white image of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast
at Tiffany’s.
When I went to pay for the cards I had chosen, I
pointed out the Hepburn card and said to the woman that I thought Audrey was
very beautiful and was one of my favorites.
The woman agreed, and asked me something that I didn’t understand, so I
said “Oui.” She then looked around under
the cash register, and whipped out a day-at-a-glance desk calendar with 352
images, all of Audrey. I politely pored
through them then went to put the calendar back in the box. It was then that I noticed it was a calendar
from 2008.
Surprised that she had held onto it for so long
while hoping that she didn’t expect me to buy a seven-year-old calendar, I
thanked her and handed back the box, preparing to pay for the cards I had
selected. But she pushed the box back at
me and said she meant for me to have the calendar. It was a gift.
The photos in this post are of Arles.
The Arlesiens are grateful to the American Air Force pilots who died while helping to liberate Arles in August 1944 |
A better view to compare with the reproduction above |
Arles sits on the Rhone river |
Riverside walkway |
Vincent was a patient at this hospital after his ear incident and breakdown. He was probably correctly diagnosed at that time as having temporal lobe epilepsy. This is now a cultural center. |
View of a cafe Vincent painted that is still there |
Harking back to its Roman roots |
The Roman amphitheatre |
Les Alyschamps was once a prestigious cemetery. |
Love the story, Dvora, and the pictures.
ReplyDeleteOf course I loved this post ... and I loved the story of your postcard and calendar.
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