Exploring Dark Places . . .

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Where to start ?
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Work kept me more than busy into the wee hours of every morning last week, then Saturday rolled around and daughter needed to go shopping for school things, papa had to open up the wallet at the store. Then all night long la grenouille and I were rocking and rolling, dancing, sipping wine and nibbling cheese (what else is there to do in France ???), and conversing in very, very good company. Sunday morning rolled around and I rolled out of bed, headed right back out to go visit an abandoned sugar factory, for the second time, and it was as sweet as it sounds. More on that soon.
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The only trouble is that the "more on that soon" topics have been accumulating for years now, and I still have simply tons of photos to share with you from all over, the old black and white film days, Haiti, la Réunion island, abandoned factories in the USA, Brittany, and odds and ends from all over. I'm beginning to think another two or three lifetimes will be necessary to do all that I want to do. Sigh. Well, we do what we can, while we can, and that's it.
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I would like to mention a continuing source of inspiration, and that is the Tumblr site of TomB... he continues to post very tasty samples of his simply delicious work. And I couldn't help but think of Tom this afternoon when I spied an old stone house with bare rafters way out in the middle of a rainy farm field. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to go take a closer look. The photos that follow show what I saw. (oh, and please do tell ten or twenty friends to go take a look at Tom's pages, his photos are sublime. Just imagine, if all ten thousand people who visit here every day were to tell just ten other people to go visit Tom's page, why, that would give Tom's site a hundred thousand page hits... wouldn't that be way cool ???)
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So, who lived here in this small stone home long ago ? Where did they go ? Will anyone ever live here again ? I'm willing to bet there may a few souls out there who would love to take this on as a fixer-upper project. Just look, those roof beams are still standing strong, just need to slap a new roof on them.

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I have to admit, we may want to find a new interior decorator, I have some doubts about the last one whose work is visible here.
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The roof on the farm shed behind the house may also need a bit of freshening up.
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And now for something completely different. I'd like to add that for quite some time I have been keeping an eye on Rima's blog The Hermitage, and am simply in awe of her artwork and down to earth approach to life on our planet. Several weeks ago she did a beautifully long post about a painting she did which has become the cover art for a book called Dark Mountain, which is a recent production of the Dark Mountain Project. After reading Rima's post, and taking a look at their website, I ordered a copy of the book, both to have one of Rima's paintings in the house, and to discover the writing from the Dark Mountain, which imho, is well worth discovering. Do take a look if you're curious, and if hooked like I was, then order the book. It is perhaps the most thought provoking work I've come across in quite some time. This is the cover, by Rima.
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