Category Archives: sunflowers

Turn, Turn, Turn.

Posted on by
1
Age in an ocean of youth

Writing has never been about the number of words.  The song title “Turn, Turn,Turn.” is only three words but it was this addition that Pete Seeger applied to the biblical words of Ecclesiastes and made the song something of  a philosophical icon of the last century

I can never see sunflowers without this song running through my head when I am here in France. The French word “tournesol” carries the notion of turning to the sun. We have fields of thousands of joyful shining faces that turn and turn and turn to their guiding sun.  Of course, they have their season, and the season turns.
Close to my home there is a field of such flowers. In the middle is a rigid old tree, long dead. My  pagan heart has been pondering this scene. The vibrant brash beauty forms a sea around this old rock. The picture at its most obvious level is of youth and death set in the context of time and season. Even so, the dead tree speaks as loudly as the clamouring crowd at its feet. Once it was a seed. Now it is an orator as the crowd turns its face to follow its message across the perfect blue sky each day closer to autumn and harvest.

In a similar mood I found myself in the 12thCentury Romanesque church of Saint Savinien a few nights ago. The occasion was a concert performed by the Mukachevo boys choir. This group of young men from Ukraine visited our little village in France as part of a programme operated by “Eurochestries”. Broadly the idea is to spread the culture and music of “Euro” peoples to each other and to give opportunity to young folk to express their talents and see foreign lands. And there in the middle of this ocean of youth was a fossilised Romantic novelist applauding my little heart out to these wonderful young guys. They opened with JS Bach (Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring) and ended with ABBA (Thank-you For The Music). 



Watch the videos and catch the re-writing of the lyric for the soloists in the ABBA song. They didn’t have any “girls with golden hair” but they pulled through like super troupers.

And there it is – my wonderful life here in France. Turning tournesols reach for the sun. Young men stretch their voices upwards with the joy and talent of youth. And my eyes, ears, hands and life – here to see, hear, love and write.

The principal contents of this post were featured on my Venture Galleries Authors Collection blog

Emma Thinx: Youth is a box of chocolates. Age is fat, sugar and doctors. Wisdom is eating the pralines.

Для всех моих друзей в России

Posted on by
2

OK – I’m showing off again. I bet no one thought I was fluent in Russian – well Google translation is as close as I can get. The title line should translate as “For all my friends in Russia”. I do not know who they are but there are hundreds of them logging on to my blog and I have no idea why Comrades. So dear Russians – I love you all and special love will go to any one adding a comment from Russia. 

Reach for the skies

I am on holiday so I am writing this blog on my terrasse. In fact I find myself sitting idly on my terrasse more and more. As the sun dries my skin I will soon look like a remake of Terrassic Park. And yes- there are real lizards in the dry stone wall. As temperatures zoom towards the melting point of foie gras I’m just gonna post a few photos from around the gorgeous undiscovered town of Saint Savinien Sur Charente. I cannot believe my good fortune at living here. Of course, les tournesols are grown as a commercial crop – it does not seem possible that they turn out millions of Van Gogh masterpieces just so that you can fry a perfect frite to go with your moules. But they do. 

If I had ever doubted that this place is in fact paradise, I must confess to a moment of religious experience a couple of days ago. I had put some left over chocolate sauce in the fridge and someone had seen it and dipped in a finger. The following morning the sauce had set, revealing the true nature of the Universe – Love and Chocolate. Just at that moment the church bells started to ring and a cockerel crowed while a neighbour’s dog howled at the bells. All of Nature gelled as one. Not since I was a teenager and saw the face of Marc Bolan in a cloud had I felt this close to The Infinite.И так до свидания моих русских читателей.




Emma thinx:  Man cultivates. Nature culminates.  













Chocs Away.

Posted on by
1

I’m tempted to quote Oscar Wilde on the subject of temptation. Unlike a genius and literary superstar, I can resist – which is probably why I drive a bus. But I am sure that many of my own romantic fiction readers here in the UK will know that it is National Chocolate week. Why do we need it? Every week is chocolate week, even if you don’t succumb to a solitary Malteser. Look – all I’ve had this week is a packet of Turkish Delight – and that was an ASDA own brand budget deal so it can’t really be counted can it? I have put up a struggle in the face of immense aggression from the chocolatiers of this world. Hotel Chocolat sent me an invitation to join their Chocolate Tasting Club. Their brochure invites me to “reach my bliss point”. Do they think that such blatant erotically charged lustful hedonism would move me? Too bloody right it would! Most junk mail goes straight in the bin. I’m not quite ready to take that final step, but I will be once I’ve signed up.



Whilst in ASDA buying my budget Turkish Delight (I think it’s a love it or hate it), I bought some sun flowers. At home in Charente Maritime they are a backdrop to summer, an orgy of careless beauty grown as a crop. You know I think that the context in which we see things is more important than the thing itself. A huge field of blooms is like a mob, an army or a nameless crowd. A few individuals in a vase are a work of art and a study of joy. How would life be if we saw the mass proletariat as precious and beautiful? How would it be if the poor and all the trampled dead of war could live an hour on canvas or in a vase or in the heart of the oppressors? We would know something then of our purpose – which is to love, to forgive and to share our chocolates. You thought I’d got God didn’t you?


Emma thinx: The crop is our reality. Each bloom is our truth.