On the train line speeding through the heart of France there is a valley, wide and deep; dense grey shadows in the morning, shimmering greens in the afternoon. There’s a village on one end, nestled into a hollow in the hillside, the way a bead of water can rest in the space beside your clavicle. Other than the village, there is mostly the grazing land of five stone farmhouses and their accompanying multitudes of (very cute) sheep. Conditions in this valley are extremely reliable. Depending on whether I have taken the 9:03 or 12:46 departure from Marseille, I know that this valley will be either dramatically draped in fog or awash in late-afternoon sun. Exactly once, late last year, it was neither.
i saw somewhere the other day, ‘sometimes writing saves us,’ and i believe that. besides the train ride, i don’t remember much about this trip, though i am commonly known for my remembering. many such moments were lost during this time, the time of The Fog, but not this one. i wrote it down.
Rain had moved through in the morning; you could smell it, even from the train. Over the crest of the valley, golden rays were muscling through the edge of the storm, determined commuters late for their appointment with the bell tower at the center of town. It was so picturesque, so abruptly resplendent that I giggled, startling the coiffed homme d’affairs across the bar car (though I like to think that once he looked up and out, he was glad for the interruption).
words abandoned me for long stretches, for months. but every so often, usually on the train, i could write a letter to my best friend. over the course of a few weeks, i collected these lovely little glimpses and wrote them down and sent them like an over-stuffed care package (over-stuffed i think because they were equally for him and for me). it was not a raison d’être, but a raison de voir, a job to keep my poet eyes active and open, scanning for beacons.
probably this is why ‘audience’ and ‘muse’ are difficult for me to disentangle.
probably this is why i remember the golden rays at all.
We were almost through the valley when I saw it: the fifth farmhouse, engulfed in a thick and solitary smear of fog (the type of fog often seen from an earlier train, perhaps the 7:03, but never from the 12:46, except today). On this odd in-between afternoon, the last farmhouse in the valley, like a sad Eeyore plopped glumly in the emerald grass, had its own cloud. It made a sort of shield so that the sun’s rays cut above the roofline, making landfall just beyond the yard. The cloud lingered in the driveway like a beloved’s long goodbye. Or like an omen.
I imagined standing in the front window. I wondered whether you could see the village, whether you could see anything but cloud, whether you would know the rest of the valley had cleared, was resplendent.
this image stayed with me all the way to paris (and even still). it haunted me, a perfect external manifestation of my interior state. it rolled around my cottonball brain, cold and damp, for days, until i found the hope in it.
because i remembered the golden rays, the light that muscled its way through, the sunbeams insisting to be born - because of that i knew (hoped? …knew.) that the light would eventually reach the farmhouse. that the fog would clear. given time.
.
♥️♥️This was the perfect thing to read on a cloudy Saturday morning. The images and structure of this essay are so compelling. And again the language of the body alive in the landscpe—“golden rays were muscling through the edge of the storm” (and then revisiting this language at the end)—so good!
thank you Claire! I’m really enjoying playing with this structure, it’s a good challenge. and oh I *love* a grey morning, especially when you can start the day a little slower 💚