Paris is absurdly splendid. Beauty is everywhere—purposeful and next to mirrors that multiply it haphazardly without cease. It is only a small miracle of light—sun rays climbing down the areal intersection of two Haussmanians on Léopold and shooting off against the Tschann Libraire’s glass display across the street on Boulevard du Montparnasse—and yet.

Then again beauty is everywhere. As in Paris, dog excrement constitutes Toulouse’s exterior décor. Still, the city holds charm. Toulouse continues that narrative repeated in numerous regions, of a warmer and more hospitable South. M and I are sold when a bus driver, seeing us race our socks off to the stop, awaits our arrival. A prince among Parisian drivers who would drive on with a wink and a smile. Ça arrive. 

We go farther South-West to Côte de Jor to work on a farm. If it’s taken a while to write this—to write anything—it is because I imagined any attempt to describe this town as reduction. I would aggrandize, sweep past details of import, and still sell it short.

Removed from the city, one imagines that little happens in the Vézère valley. But just a few kilometers that way is perhaps the biggest Tibetan Buddhism center in Europe. We don’t go. Closer still is a paragliding site. We go but don’t jump. We till small patches of land and stick seeds and plants to ground: carrots, strawberries, chard, onions, golden beets. All the onions bloomed, not one gave to frost.