Most of last week, for work, I made concrete. It's amazing that you can spend five hours making concrete without getting bored, and in the end without even minding too much the noise of the mixer and the tractor, or the cement powder which gets into your nose when you pour it into the mixer... But ok, that's also not something I would fancy doing every day.
Joan said that it showed that I have spent some time in a lab, because I was able to follow the recipe consistently, without forgetting ingredients and without making it too thick or too liquid.
So I guess I am a concrete-making pro now. And sadly, I guess I must seem more competent at making concrete than at taking care of children, because it has been a while since my childcare-taking abilities have been solicited.
Yes, we made a lot of concrete last week, for the purpose of building the terrace and stairs in front of the cottage. The result is very surprising. Before the concrete gets hard, they dig little crevasses around roundish-rectangular shapes. Then, when the concrete is hard, they paint the remaining flat surfaces with a ferrous oxide solution, which turns the surface to a neat brown-reddish orange. Then, they fill back the crevasses with a smooth concrete. (Process which makes Ramon, who is not a fan of concrete, laugh. "Removing concrete to put some more back, that's a nice way of spending your evening, isn't it? Well, at least in the meantime you aren't in the streets doing vandalism.") The result is amazingly pleasing, bringing sort of a soothing feeling, which is quite unexpected of, for concrete.
At some point, I asked Ramon why they needed such huge stairs for people only to walk from the driveway into the cottage. He said that the cottage being for people to rent, they need to have a paved way where people won't get their feet wet. I pondered on the amount of material and energy that went into making these stairs. Not only for the concrete, but also all the stones that went under it (ah yes, gathering stones in a neighbor's field has been another job of last week). And all this for the people who come here, in the middle of the beautiful Ariège forest, to not get their feet wet... I can't help thinking, why the hell do you come to the forest, if you don't want to get your feet wet? I thought of the fast and cheap wooden constructions of America. But then I also thought that nobody will go, in two hundred years, visit these constructions, whereas we do go and marvel by the millions at the Coliseum of Rome, or the Maya temples or the pyramids of Egypt - even though more than just human sweat most have gone into building them. So, I just don't know. In the end I think, if something is done with love and heart, well, it cannot be so bad.
Well, these concrete stairs are surely done with heart.
**
Another thought which often comes back to my mind when I do any kind of work on the cottage, is the realization of how much work must have gone into building the house! It is a beautiful two-story house - with a kitchen, a living room/office, two bathrooms, a huge garage/workshop, a cellar, and three beautiful all-wood rooms upstairs, for the family. Not to forget the huge cistern for the rain water, which took several weeks of concrete-making to build.
Joan and Sol built the whole house with their own hands, before the kids were born. It took three full years, during which they didn't take a single time off, because Joan has this, that when he starts something, he will go full power into it until it's finished, and also because, in the meantime they were living in a hangar down the road, and they were fed up with it. But when the construction was over, said Joan, for one year afterward, he didn't do anything.
***
Alexandra left yesterday, she had to go back to Miami, where her sister just gave birth. I will miss her constant kindness to all, and constant desire to marvel at and to make beautiful things. Once, we were driving around here in a particularly beautiful area, and she thought of the fact that she was there, and that soon she would have to be in Miami instead, and tears came to her eyes.
***
Over the past few days here was a man who came to do the plumbing in the cottage. He was a rather unhappy person, and he constantly got upset for all sorts of things and against all sorts of people. So, in the end, things got a little sour, and when he left yesterday we were all relieved not to have his dark mood around anymore.
Then in the afternoon, Joan was picking things scattered on the grass, before cutting it down with the mower.
Joan is sometimes of an efficiency freak, which makes it very nice for me to work with him, but also makes that he can get quite upset if things are forgotten or not properly made or not properly thought of.
But this afternoon, as he was picking up the various toys of the kids scattered on the grass, Joan said: "you see all these things scattered... it's a lot of things taking space in my mind. But because I get upset with them all the time, they end up taking even more space in my mind than they do on their own. It's this man who made me realize this. Some people do things to him which hurt him. But he cannot let go, he keeps on reminding himself how hurt he has been by this. So he ends up being even more hurt... As painful as his presence here was, it has shown me this precious lesson. I hope it will change something in me. I really need it."
***
Yesterday came some people of the "Acceuil Paysan" association.
It seems that many small farms choose to also have a gîte, and "Acceuil Paysan" is one of the several associations which one can get into. The last farm where I was, in Perigord, also did it.
I find that it's a great way for everyone to get what they need, i.e. for the farmer to get some cash and some connection with outside and the city, and for the visitors to get a time off in the country side, with the good food, the green, the animals.
For the kids coming from the city, the effect is absolutely amazing. I have never seen city kids get as excited and as interested and motivated as when they get near the animals, be it the chickens, or the sheep, or the goats, or the horses, or the cows...
Anyhow. I spoke with a girl who lives in a hamlet higher up in the mountains. I learned from this conversation something quite interesting. This hamlet, just like tons and tons of hamlets (particularly in France??), has been deserted in the fifties. There only remains her two parents-in-law, who sold a piece of land there to her and her husband. The piece of land contains the ruin of a house, and they wanted to rebuild it.
But it turns out that it will be impossible for them to get a construction permit, and not because they will want large non-typically Ariege windows, as they initially thought, but, and to their amazement, for the following reasons: 1° There is no connection to public water, and if they use the source they would have to pay 1500 euros per year to get it tested, and getting a connection would require the city building a water tower just for them, which of course the city would not do. 2° The road which leads to the hamlet, a curvy 6 km dirt road in the mountain, is not good enough for the fire trucks to get there, and nobody will be able to pay for that good-enough road to be built for them.
The girl was quite upset that they would not get their permit, for things which they didn't ask to have - city water, fire and emergency trucks access. "Bloody non-sense European regulations", she said. On top of being non-sense, she added, almost all existing and inhabited hamlets are in the situation of not having city water nor good-enough roads, and thus are breaking the law.
I told her that I understood her, but that I also understood the city. We agreed, as a society, that everyone would get some particular services. Now we cannot go and offer these services to wherever whoever well pleases. I think I pissed her off. And she answered, with a touch of sadness in her voice: "and all these old hamlets, what shall we do then, just let them disappear?". I answered something which retrospectively sounds both reasonable and stupid: "well, perhaps we should sit down and decide which ones we want to keep..."
This topic of hamlets in the middle of nowhere seems to be deep in the heart of the Ariégois. Several times I heard people here say "Oh it's terrible, such and such place in the middle of the mountains is disappearing". And me, with my Canadian-born mind, I answer, "What's so bad about it? Isn't great to have some places, sometimes, where there are no humans?". But then they answer: "Well, yes and no. When there is a place like this in the mountains, it keeps an access to the mountain alive". Are they the same people who then, later, long to go to Canada to marvel at its (supposedly) untouched nature?
I don't know... They might have a point. But my inclination is rather to think that they mostly can't let go of old things, and that there is a bit of selfishness in the desire to live in a completely isolated place. I read and hear this comment so often: "Ah, this place is so great, you cannot hear any human-made noise." Well, except for your own, dear...
