LES FLEURYS, SUNDAY APRIL 2 1950.

Farmhouse, of a single elongate ground floor, facing south. Protected by several outbuildings that form perpendicular wings, to the right.

Westerly, that is to say from the right, coming in bursts, cutting close at the ground to high up among the airs even, often in gusts, hailstones, the frigid worries, the bluish overshadowing.

Savage and enthusiastic mood held under sunlight, around ten in the morning, as under a frosted headlamp, very high to the left, which lays bare the festoons of cloud and suddenly discovers itself, with a laugh along the façades.

They lean over the vegetation, letting drops of water onto the grass and into the branches.

We have one of the landscapes of the western septentrion there, all swept with water, always under the polar rag, the Atlantic mop-cloth.

... These storms a little colder than they are mild.

There the woods are thriving, so it is necessary to cut and dry its logs — they in turn will become roseate — so as to have a little fire in the ground floor fireplace of the house, — a little of this live coal's warmth coming from the wood lit by human industry to offset the head colds and rheumatisms.

But underneath, nourishing, the elongate body of the brown earth.

* * *

It is on us to resay November as one opens a drawer (overfilled with pearls and old scarves), that spills itself (and pours out its overflow).

March has made its way here as one shakes the rags out a last time, as one makes a last pass with the sarp-cloth.

But the broideries quickly take their place again – the canvas fills at full speed.

Starting off from the old canvas, the broideries that grow out of the earth, the threads that grow out of the earth and knot themselves and (circulate) (progress) (amble) unravel themselves and spin and weave themselves, knit themselves, form fringes, tassels, bobbles, braidlets.

Always too many (cherry blossoms), for the wind tears some off and scatters them. And enough of them must remain

so that the seeds are formed, the seeds, the little bobbins that bury themselves to be unraveled next spring.

But it also forms sticklets for the new canvas.

From these knots the animals are detached, spared, vagabonded (birds, insects, mammals, rodents and others).

The body of carbon variations, OUR body, from the black to the brown, to the green, and on to all the colors, even the white flowers, those diamonds.

Flowers imitating also the crystals of other rocks (all the colors imitate precious stones), and the flesh tones (of animals), and blood.

Meanwhile the (tender) women traffic in tepid water, the soups, the lyes; washing; heating the soup to nourish the warm bodies in their charge.

Wringing. Wiping.

And there is a music of the wash. Timbales of basins and pans, triangles of utensils.

And the big blue and white earthenware bowl of the skies finds itself all washed, all rinsed, all clean and the looks turn blue, light up.

One smiles at another.

Yet the floor or wall clock beats the measure of the heart and of time (of the grave, of the despairing flight of time).

* * *

All comes to pass (we age), but the children climb the steps (of the staircase) of time to come laughing into the dining room.

Music of kisses. Birdsongs. Repopulation. Music of the kettle, of frying.

Music of fires. Crackling of the embers and logs. Bellows, streams of smoke.

* * *

Windows and mirrors cleaned, rubbed. One smiles at another.

PROEM OF THE SAME DAY

LES FLEURY, SUNDAY APRIL 2 1950.

At every instant to have lost, to have to refind one's vocabulary, to have to start over from the most common vocabulary, crude, down to earth, from the lack of vocabulary, nearly absolute, of farmers, of workers, of their badges, muddy, earthen blunder: look at what is good! Good sign. A chance.

(Not merely the vocabulary of the hay dock, but the lack of vocabulary.)

* * *

Like never-ending rain, the inclement weather brings decay, it deteriorates rustic houses, one must redress (repair) this or soon suffer collapse. Look at what is good. Good sign. This struggle, this elementary inclement weather. Rain, which damages, which brings walls to collapse, which rots the wood but also washes, that is healthy. Struggling with that, that is good. There is need for a constant reinvention; of the solid, of the good, of the roughly constituted.

So, one restarts to clear the throat or gullet, of pebbles, of the piles of pebbles in the road, of the earth and the water of the streams (that come from the rains).

As there are piles of pebbles collected in places to regravel the roads, surely there are words. One must go and search for them. In the gullet, in the gullet of others, in books, in dictionaries. By the shovelful, in scraping the graveling.

* * *

Countryside, encumbering solitude. It must be said that I sleep a lot, do not talk much, am rather grumbly, surly. No ideas, no readings, a real wild child. And that I cumber my body like an old tree-trunk of gnarled meat, of indigestible things at times, that I have plenty of mucus, catarrh, not the body that is unduly liberated, the spirit so numb and misty and dripping that it suddenly suns itself. That, that is good.

And the idea of death, the possibility of dying (from a gust of wind) at every instant that sweeps across me. That, that is good, too.

* * *

Landscape.

I like these large sooted knots, these expressions of knotted trunks, bundles of wet (soaked) firewood, large sooted knots under a grey silken sky (a little blue, made blue), and this untidying, these face-slaps of inclement weather (by the elements) in solitude.

The bistre darkens more and more, almost to black, from which the tender green suddenly suddenly surges (and even, at first, for the hawthorns, the white), then all the colors in imitation of the mineral.

It is from the branchlets, from the nearly black reglets that the green and the white surge up.

* * *

Electricity: the reddening filaments.

LES FLEURYS, THURSDAY APRIL 6 1950

After a cold and cloudy morning, and as for my head, a violent migraine ...

All that cleared up around midday (as for me by an aspirin) (The sun played the aspirin for the sky, for nature),

Look at how around 17 h 30 the sky totally cleared, but the sun already low to the left barely giving off warmth,

I REREAD (and title) the LANDSCAPE OF EARLY-SPRING and I write that which follows, as preface-reflection:

"I am not able to say, write (or think) but what the season inspires me to."

(These days here: landscapes, nioque, proems, notes of the early-spring.)

* * *

One should gather all of this, and say it in fewer words.

In a way that is more concisely concrete, and thus nearly abstract (for the future).

* * *

To note that only several degrees of heat are lacking.

Hands almost cold. Patches of strong winds in places that the light will shape in several weeks.

Even more than the sun, it is patches of cold wind that mold the...