Before & after

Two vacation books: "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett and "We Were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates.

Both pivot on lives before and after an event that changes everything.

Today was our last day in L'Isle sur la Sorgue. There is a Thursday produce/flea market and it was held under a fiercely blue sky and buffetted by the famous Mistral winds of Provence and southern France. The Mistral had been blowing since yesterday really, then carrying with it rain, today, just turbulence.

Despite the breezy distraction, the day was gorgeous, and it is an understatement to use that word to describe the light. I had been starting to feel overwhelmed by the touristy-ness of the place and wondering if people who live here take its beauty for granted. Perhaps after the tourists, with their fanny packs and walking sticks and cameras, go home, their eyes open again.

We sat in Notre Dame des Anges this afternoon, a 13th century church that's been "remodeled" several times over the centuries and that has a lovely Italian pipe organ, at least the third one since 1530. There also is a moon dial on the front of the church, to help farmers tell keep track of the seasons -- spring, after spring, summer, after summer, fall and the winter months. There are six bays in the church along the nave leading to the main altar and I wondered about all the rituals those bays were once built for. Baptism, penance, buying contrition, burial, veneration of the saints; all kinds of thing that have been lost, more or less, to time.

Things that were before.

Les photos:

 1) Random poster.

 2) The blue Provencal sky.

 3) Melons from Cavaillon from the Thursday market. We tasted these earlier in the week with jambon and the combination of sweet and salty was sublime.

 4) Sunflowers at the Thursday market in L'Isle sur la Sorgue.

5) Notre Dame des Anges, L'Isle sur la Sorgue, with clock and moon dial above the entrance.

6) The Virgin Mary, looking down from a smaller church tucked away in an alley.