Summer passes and you meet people, some faces you already knew, others you become more familiar with each time. And then there’s that one face you miss, the one you know will never turn that one corner again. In the first year, your imagination fools you, and you remember a walk, a voice, laughter. A gesture that touches you, you stop in the street because you are touched. Flooded with memory.

Michel Piccoli, that’s what I call him, who met me here on the street again and again as if by chance but reliably every summer, is gone.

He was a big shot for those who knew him. An original. Who could handle his rough manner. Certainly not an easy man.

His house in the hills in the forest has been emptied, and the blinds lowered. His autobiography from which he still quoted to us at his birthday dinner will remain hidden from the world. The unknown daughter to the village people, whose name reminds of a Clementine, she lives in the city, she will never know that I, my soul send greetings to the soul of her father. On the Internet remains of him his date of death and the deregistration of his trade. It did not prevent him to continue working for many years. Numerous houses in the area benefited from his craftsmanship.

He was a craftsman, but also an artist. He worked with ceramics, and designed mostly strange creatures, mythical creatures, which often wore large breasts in places that astonished ( from an anatomical point of view). But also people he knew. So also the portrait of my father-in-law.
People disappear from this village for different reasons. You walk down the street and sometimes you ponder how it could be different. And then you go on.

New faces appear. You experience it with joy that there are days when you walk across the square and coincidentally everyone meets at that same moment and makes plans together for the next days or weeks. „On se verra!“ Until the next time.