Detail Diary, Vol #28

Buttercups and exploded green + a trip to Paris and Provence

April 2025

Dear friend,

A week or two ago I was heading out on my daily arboretum walk and realized I had forgotten my phone (i.e. camera). I started to go back for it (for the detail diary!) but thought better of it. I entered the arboretum through a tunnel of pale pink trumpet flowers, watched some kids adding branches to one of the dens propped against a cherry tree, passed a limber couple doing tai chi next to the hornbeam, admired the palmate flare of horse chestnut leaves that have quadrupled in size since I last noticed them, noted each tender touch of sun on creamy virburnum petals and maple leaves, listened to frogs jabber in the little pond and spotted a writhing mass of tadpoles.

I came out into a raft of buttercups and let my eyes burn with the infinite yellow, all this eager reproductive effort surging out in neon; let bobbing heads resolve fleetingly into individuals here and there and there and here; let my own head spin with failing to fathom how many flowers make one single patch of buttercups; and savored the golden depth of field that, if I had my phone camera with me, I would instead be cursing said camera for failing to see as I squinted at the screen.

I went back for a few of these photos the next day, and indeed took my camera with me on every other walk. I love having and sharing these photos, little mementos of the gifts of the day. They’re often gems in their own right, and I think composing them can aid my noticing. But, for me, there’s also tension in having that rectangle of tunnel vision coming so often between my senses and the subject and setting, direct experience diluted by the (sometimes compulsive) acquisitiveness of collecting. On my camera-free walk, I still collected, fixing moments in my memory and taking a few notes later—but it required my full participation instead of outsourcing the memory. I’ve always valued alchemizing such multi-dimensional memories into words and sharing (or receiving) them that way, but it’s easy to lose my grip on this practice in the midst of such a visual internet.

These approaches are certainly not mutually exclusive; it’s down to me to direct my own mindfulness. So, while I don’t plan to stop posting photos, I will be trying more of these camera-free walks, I think. Writing some more sense-soaked poetry.

Also, en plein mois d'avril, I went to Paris. And drove to Avignon with my parents. And reveled in all the colors and textures of Provence. (See my postcard highlighting Mediterranean plants last week.)

Read on for the Details…

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Vacances

• I took the train to Paris to meet my parents who had flown in from the US. We spent two days going to museums (Musée Marmottan Monet, Petit Palais, Cluny Medieval museum) and concerts (oh and also the Catacombs), then rented a car and drove south.

• We stopped in the middle of nowhere—the five-house village of Nohant-Vic, south of Orleans—to fulfill my pianist father’s pilgrimage to the house of George Sand where Chopin lived with her during summers for the last decade of his life. The toll-free route also took us past a few Loire Valley chateaux.

• In Avignon, we stayed in the historic center, wandered, and visited the Papal Palace.

And then day-tripped to:

• Les Baux-de-Provence (not pictured but imagine a fortress village on a limstone cliff) + Arles (Roman ruins and art festival setting up sound stages everywhere we went and also NB the Fondation Van Gogh doesn’t actually exhibit Van Gogh¹)

• The Pont du Gard + Uzès, including a walk along the utterly lush and blooming Vallée de L’Eure near the source of the Roman aqueduct that runs over the Pont du Gard (plus an abandoned water mill) + a stop in Villeneuve-les-Avignon to see the dreamy gardens of the Abbaye de Saint-André.

• Gordes (another village perché layered and layered with stone—see first photo for a view) + Rousillon (built on hills full of rust-colored ochre clay, painted onto facades and exposed in the abandoned quarries).

• And part of a sunny day in Lyon. I almost fell down the narrow spiral stairs made of warped ancient stone leading to our fourth-floor airbnb.

Bonus: petite Annie

1. Okay, okay, they had two Van Goghs on rotation, but they were dull ones, and the rest of the current exhibit was a contemporary artist we had never heard of. I’m all for discovering new art, but let’s just say expectations were mismanaged.