#74: Les hippies d'Ariège
Microfiction, mailable art, and monthly creative news.
Howdy, my end-of-Junebugs -
By the time you read this, my mama will be here! We haven’t seen one another since October 2023; I’m so excited, I can’t think about much else. The past month, every café I’ve biked past has sparked a daydream about my mom and I drinking cappuccinos. This week, we’re going to play an insane amount of Rummikub and Scrabble, bop around cafés, explore small towns… and oh, go see STING.
This world is wild and frightening and strange - not in the good way all the time - but I’m grateful to live in an era when my mom exists and can cross an ocean to share the same 64m2 of space as me and Rhody and the rabbits. Take all moments of kindness that you can, my friends, and gorge yourself on them.
And on the last day of the month, we feast on art! I’ll…
💌 show you my visual interpretation of Rhody and I’s FIFTEEN YEAR anniversary,
💌 reveal the voting results for this month’s prompt,
💌 share my imagining of an old man in a dry month1,
💌 and dish some monthly creative news.
🌾 A month in postcard art
On June 21st, Rhody and I celebrated FIFTEEN YEARS together. Being in love rules. We renewed our vows one-on-one after hiking into a creek that cut between some hay fields. Whatever you’re picturing, it was more idyllic: aquamarine dragonflies and a million other images I want to hoard to myself in my memory til I’m 114.
The fields we hiked past took us to the village of Becq, which is a lot like where I imagine our Cher Monsieur Caubet must have lived.
After renewing our vows, we trekked down into Foix and came upon an old fountain tap with running water. You can bet your asses we filled our bottle and drank, and Caubet and Labayle were close in my mind the whole time.
Naturally, I took zero photos of the trip. But I was so inspired by the Ariège villages I saw, not far from where our letters were written, and I made linocuts with acrylic backgrounds to share the bucolic French countryside with my subscribers.
I pulled inspiration from Van Gogh’s wheat fields and skies but, you know, in a very different medium. As someone who’s frequently literal to a painful degree, getting loosey-goosey with ya was sweeter than a cool drink from a hundred-year-old fountain.
🗳 The votes are in
Patrons and full-access subscribers voted for this month’s postcard-fiction prompt:
Action: emptying a car
Word: desolate
Inspiration: Cher Monsieur Caubet: the packet of WWI-era letters I found at a flea market
In case you missed it, here’s everything you need to know about this bureaucratic drama in the French department of Ariège:
#72: Cher Monsieur Caubet
Sometimes, after a hiatus, beginning is the hardest part. Hello, friends. How are you? May was largely difficult, until it became beautiful, thanks in no small part to a visit from U.S. shapeshifting wonder artist Xena Zeitgeist. We spent a week exploring Toulouse, binging
Each month after voting closes, I give myself a measly 48 hours to write you a story set in whatever slice of history we explored.
🛌 Ariège, 1970 - the hippies and the bureaucrat
Here’s the postcard I wrote on:
In the passenger seat of his great-niece Sylvie’s puttering Renault, blanket tucked around his knees to combat the autumn chill, Monsieur Caubet misses the Great War.
Yes, his mother’s family died on the Western Front, their Longueval farm razed by a desolate cobweb of trenches and landmines. Terrible. But here in Ariege, all but forgotten by the government, Caubet trekked kilometers upon kilometers, to Saint-Girons and Foix and back, to replace his village well. And after, who got roads paved, brought electricity in? Caubet. Above the blanket, his hands tremble, clutching the yellowed envelope of letters proving he once waged bureaucratic wars – and won.
But one day he looked around to find all his old neighbors dead, young people tilling their soil. Surrounded by strange faces, it’s no wonder he got lost on his evening walk last month. Just once – fine, twice – and Sylvie wrested him from his home so he could live in her – what did she call it? – “compound.”
Lovely. At least his legs are toasty.
Sylvie puts the car in park, bangles clattering. A long-haired man with a chest tattoo – terrible, what these hippies do to themselves – emerges from a cluster of round tents beside Sylvie’s crumbling gîte. Caubet grips his envelope tighter, but Sylvie grins at the hippie, paisley skirt snagging on the emergency brake as she springs out to exchange bisous.
With a shaking arm, Caubet opens his door.
Sylvie pops the trunk, rattling the car. “He’ll be tired. Help me set him up?”
Like Caubet can’t hear. He could hear his young neighbor whistle in his fields! The hippie grabs Caubet’s suitcase as if it were light as a blanket. Well, two men would make quick work of the luggage; best make himself useful. As Caubet tries to leave the car, the blanket snares his legs, wrapping under one and around the other. Sweat pricks his thighs. The fleece fights back. Tugging one blanket corner, the envelope slips from his grip, fluttering to the dirt.
When Caubet grunts, it’s more a whimper. Legs still tangled in the blanket, he braces himself on the car door to reach the envelope.
His satchel slung over her shoulder, Sylvie rushes over, clucking her tongue. “Ah, ma petite miette, you’re overdoing it again.”
In one movement, she whips the blanket off and helps him stand, stooping for the letters without releasing his arm. When he tries for it, she’s already slipping the envelope into the satchel, where it disappears like his decades of service never existed. At this point, who’s to say they did?
When she tugs him towards the gîte, kilometers upon kilometers from the village that once celebrated his name, Monsieur Caubet plods along without a fight.
💻 Your turn: write microfiction!
Using the same prompts above (emptying a car/desolate/Monsieur Caubet), write a story of your own! Give yourself 48 hours or less to write it, keep it quick, and remember: the goal isn’t perfection. It’s putting your pen (cursor) to the page (screen) and making some art. I did this one in about 36 hours!
When you’re ready to share it with me, reply to this email, post it directly in the comments, or put them in a packet for sale at a flea market near me. Reading your work is the highlight of my month!
(As always, if you’re feeling stuck getting started, here’s an article I wrote on microfiction fundamentals.)
🦧 July’s theme - let’s go ape!
This month, while some of y’all were keen on the Japanese feudal postal system (it’ll win one day, I figure!), one topic was a clear winner:
🦧 “Always felt the stirring in my blood” - Jane Goodall’s first letters home 🦧
I am amped not only for exploring Jane Goodall’s letters and research, but also because I will be dropping countless monkey and ape puns. Please prepare yourself while I go… bananas…
🌍 Updates in my creative world
I finished draft one of my Wild West fantasy novel. I am obsessed. As a history nerd, writing my own alternate timeline has made my bones sing - not only because it’s the escapist respite I need. And with only 9 months between uncovering the seedling of the idea to finishing my first draft, I’d say we’ve made good time. Now onto draft two (and three, and four).
I submitted to the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize. It’s my first time submitting a painting to any sort of competition, and honestly? I’m just excited that I love a painting of mine enough to throw my hat in the ring. It is, of course, the painting you’ve seen seven thousand times, Recovery Window.
I chipped away at edits to my nearly complete novel, the magic realism historical fiction set in 1950s Hollywood. The edits I’m incorporating? Hoo, doggie, just you wait. It’ll be a slam-bang novel when I’m done.
I made a cake-shaped end table for my bedroom out of spackle, paint, and fake food items bought off Etsy. Since moving to France I’ve been playing with the intersection of home design and fine art. Still not sure where this exploration will lead me, but it’s been a riot.
And finally (and most importantly), I’ve nursed my tender (faux) chicky nug heart and spent these months recovering to find my way back into the art that sparks the lighthouse in my chest.
If this newsletter inspired you to make art or write something, send it my way! sWitness what you’ve put in the world is the privilege of a lifetime.
All my love and plastic cherries forever,
Nikita, your Snail Mail Sweetheart
If you get this reference please comment and let me know.