I just arrived in the southwest of France (in the Midi-Pyrenees) to begin an artist residency at Le Moulin a Nef in a tiny village called Auvillar. Quite a culture shock after pinxtos (tapas)-bar-hopping in San Sebastian, Spain till all hours of the night. On my first morning here, today, the Residency Director Cheryl Fortier and her husband John invited the artists (there are 4 of us) to come with them to watch the Tour de France cyclists go speeding by. Pourquois pas? So, of course, I went. There we were, with about 100 locals, on the side of the road, with sunflowers all around and an ancient abbey down the road, waiting. And the cavalcade of cars with passing floats throwing out hats, keychains (I got knocked in the head by a little cow keychain!), candies, madeleines....
And then we waited for another 45 minutes for the cyclists to whoosh by: frightening in their speed, like a herd of stampeding wildcats. It must have taken no more than 5 seconds for them to go by.
One of Cheryl and John's friends was explaining that there is the tradition of the Lanterne Rouge (Red Lantern): the person who completes the Tour but comes in dead last. And he is celebrated. It's like being the caboose of the Tour. And I thought, What a poetic idea. Maybe we poets are the Red Lanterns of the Tour de Coeur (The Tour of the Heart). We take our time, peruse the landscape, and come in last, but at least we finish the race.
