We are staying at the gite offered by Jean-Nicolas and Viviane, in the village of Valensole. This means that below our floor lies the "poterie", the atelier of Jean-Nicolas, where the wheels, forming boards, kilns, bins of clay and buckets of slip work the hands of our friend. This means he is there at dawn, watering the garden terrace behind the gate, and then stepping lightly into the studio to work. Above, this means we mix our salad, gather our bread, pile our pasta, and pour our wine into the bowls, plates, cups, platters, and other hand-wrought ware of this very place.

This means that each act allows us, taking up one thing at a time in our own hands, to be museum of the sturdy and the beautiful.

We have been in the museum of the many and the long famous. We have walked the corridors of glass cases closely guarded. We have surveyed the panorama of the Etruscan world, gazed at the parade of the Roman, the medieval, the painted renaissance. All that glory, yes.

But here, Perrin reaches for a bowl of earth green, with its water shapes Jean-Nicolas stroked into them of circle and pod, and she puts the cut tomato there, adds oil and vinegar and basilico, and hands this treasure to me. Here, the beautiful is not what we see but what we hold and do.

Below our floor, the water flows, earth takes shape, the volcano burns, and shape by shape this life comes into our hands.

KIM STAFFORD