Arles & Why Part II

Carre Voltaire, Arles

(my room on second story by the sign for Hotel Voltaire)

I came to Arles abruptly after a rupture upstream at Savasse, near Montelimar, on the Rhone at the river’s edge of The Drome. The cubist palazzo we stayed in at Savasse had become a family bell jar and a graceful escape after days with child in tow and on her clock, became untenable. After my sharp words in Valence when the ruins were nowhere to be seen (those in another “V”-town to the North), the kid in cranky tears, Grandma having driven and now short-tempered, and her son, my friend, hopelessly irked at all and sundry, I took a walk alone. I had to part, at least for half an hour to later rendez-vouz at an eatery where our presence was almost ghostly to the inattentive garcon. He passed us by in favor of emptier tables long before seeing us. My need to go rose above the scene like a hot moon. I had bee-lined it for the train station when I got my walkabout just to find out how to get gone as swiftly as the French Rail could take me -- from this close encampment to a more lost place. I decided on a southerly route, on Arles somewhat randomly, though I looked out at Avignon in passing the next day, to think that this Bachelor of History ought at least to pay a papal visit to the half bridge and its quarters, but Arles came before Avignon and I needed to restart at the beginning.