We flew over the brown Loire, by a long, long bridge at Orleans, and from then on I was home, although I had never seen it before, and shall never see it again. It was there, too, that Father told me about Joan of Arc, and I supposed the thought of her was with me, at least in the back of my mind, all the day long. Maybe the thought of her, acting as a kind of implicit prayer by the veneration and love it kindled in me, won me her intercession in heaven, so that through her I was able to get some sort of actual grace out of the sacrament of her land, and to contemplate God without realizing it in all the poplars along those streams, in all the low-roofed houses gathered about the village churches, in the woods and the farms and the bridged rivers. We passed a place called Chateaudun. When the land became rockier, we came to Limoges, with a labyrinth of tunnels, ending in a burst of light and a high bridge and a panorama of the city crowding up the side of a steep hill to the feet of the plain-towered cathedral. And all the time we were getting deeper and deeper into Aquitaine: towards the old provinces of Quercy and Rouergue, where, although we were not sure yet of our destination, I was to live and drink from the fountains of the Middle Ages.
In the evening we came to a station called Brive. Brive-la-Gaillarde. The dusk was gathering. The country was hilly, and full of trees, yet rocky, and you knew that the uplands were bare and wild. In the valleys were castles. It was too dark for us to see Cahors.
And then: Montauban.
What a dead town! What darkness and silence, after the train. We came out of the station into an empty, dusty square, full of shadows, and a dim light, here and there. The hoofs of the cab-horse clopped away along the empty street, taking some of the other people who had descended from the express off into the mysterious town. We picked up our bags and crossed the square to a hotel that was there, one of those low, undefined, grey little hotels, with a dim bulb burning in a downstairs window, illuminating a small cafe, with a lot of iron tables and a few calendars covered with flyspecks and the big volumes of the Bottin crowding the rickety desk of the sourfaced lady in black who presided over the four customers.
And yet, instead of being dreary, it was pleasant. And although I had no conscious memory of anything like this, it was familiar, and I felt at home. Father threw open the wooden shutters of the room, and looked out into the quiet night, without stars, and said:
"Do you smell the woodsmoke in the air? That is the smell of the Midi."
Funny thing. I sort of come from a town that outsiders might describe as "dead." Of course, visitors don't see all the stuff that goes on in little bergs like Merton's Montauban or my hometown. In my city, on Main Street, there's a library at one end. At the other, is a Catholic Church. In between, there are bars and antique shops and a little diner where everyone goes on Fridays nights for the fish fry. In winter, Main Street looks like Santa's village at the North Pole.
Today (February 12) as snow storm has moved into my little pocket of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We are supposed to receive between six to seven inches from this tiny squall. That may sound like a lot of snow to my disciples from warmer climes, but for Yoopers, that amount of snow doesn't even warrant an extra trip to the grocery store. However, my hometown will look like Santa's village by the time I get home from teaching this evening.
Much has happened in the world since the last time I wrote a blog post. A foreign language film (Parasite from South Korea) pretty much cleaned up at the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 9, winning all the major awards, including Best Picture. A first in the history of the Oscars.
Bernie Sanders narrowly won the New Hampshire Primary after coming in a close second in Iowa last week. I don't know what that means politically, but it sort of heartens me that people support Senator Sanders' ideas in the United States, which increasingly seems to be edging toward the cliff of fascism. Perhaps there is hope for my country after all.
And on Tuesday, my new puppy, Juno, had her first vet appointment since becoming a part of my family. She currently weighs 5.9 pounds and can be distracted by dog treats when getting a shot. (Seriously, she didn't even flinch.) She has become the center of love in our home. Over the last month or so, I have learned that, no matter how shitty my day has been, a few licks on the face from a puppy can cure the darkest of moods.
That about catches you up on what has been going on in this wannabe saint's life. Snow. Oscars. Social Democrats. Puppies. What more can you ask for in a blog post?
Saint Marty will be blogging from Calumet, Michigan, tomorrow evening. He's on the road for a little radio show called the Red Jacket Jamboree at the Rozsa Center on the campus of Michigan Technological University. Stop on by if you get the chance.
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