Month: September 2016

Initiations

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1-hymnoftheuniverse
Photo at 2CRG

For WAJ & ERF

I thank you, my God, for having in a thousand different ways led my eyes to discover the immense simplicity of things. Little by little, through the irresistible development of those yearnings you implanted in me, as a child, through the influence of gifted friends who entered my life at certain moments to bring light and strength to my mind, and through the awakenings of spirit I owe to the successive initiations, gentle and terrible, which you caused me to undergo: through all these I have been brought to the point where I can no longer see anything, nor any longer breathe, outside that milieu in which all is made one.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Hymn of the Universe

The last day of September. Contented and reflective. Quieter by far than the last few glad days in Paris. Never far from the river, I’ve lost count of the times I watched a leaf or a twig baptised into its flow.

Once connected to one branch and one tree. Now carried, moving onward in a larger universe. Then, a bud, a leaf or a twig, somewhere. Now, elsewhere. Matured and maturing still. Dying and living. Living and dying. Here. On the move. On the river. Higher, broader, deeper, wider.

Yes: as Teilhard before me, I notice ‘the immense simplicity of things’. Leaf and twig will die into that ‘milieu in which all is made one.’ And I recall another quiet moment, another leaf, another river.

Revenir. Come again.

Sur le quai à côté de la seine

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paris-1768706_960_720
Photo at Pixabay

Paris pulls most like a strong magnet on the mornings we have to leave. It’s irrational. We visited everywhere you could think of in forty eight hours but there’s always somewhere we desperately need to be right now. Right now, when the taxi’s outside waiting to whisk us back to Montparnasse! What is it about this huge, busy, noisy city that has such a hold on us?

Well: just about everything. Châtelet. The Louvre. Art nouveau Métropolitain. Buskers. The scent of brandy, good strong coffee, and cigarettes. Tiny bistros packed to the walls. Notre Dame. Rue du Rivoli. Apartment dwellers dining elegantly on tiny, chic, wrought iron balconies overlooking roof gardens. Stacked cases of wine – themselves works of dusty fine art. The tower, of course, and the intensity. Accomplished monocyclists, romance, and style. Visionaries and arty plans for the future. Bicyclettes and hundreds and hundreds of scooters.

Again and again though, it’s the most surprising things that are forever planted firmly in my heart and mind. Nowhere but Paris can a single, beautiful, fallen, golden leaf, fluttering gently in the breeze on the cobbles of the quay beside the Seine – nowhere but here could a man hear a leaf whispering ‘come again’.

Vers la gare Montparnasse s’il vous plaît monsieur. Merci beaucoup …

But three and a half hours later, fickle as they come, we’re newly in love, again, with that other, quieter, river.

Salle de La Joconde

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mona-lisa-1357716_960_720
Photo at Pixabay

Had the room only been quieter I might have heard Leonardo chatting with her, yet the throng of visitors from all over the world is something to be celebrated. We’ve come for face to face encounter today with a half-length portrait of a woman, by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which John Lichfield of The Independent acclaimed in 2005 as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world”.

The Mona Lisa, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, probably painted between 1503 and 1506. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to feel when, awestruck by the ornate exterior and the interior galleries of the Louvre itself, (architecture, venerable and modern, spectacularly juxtaposed), and overwhelmed by the sheer number of famous works of art along the way, we joined hundreds in the Salle de La Joconde (as the painting is known to the French) this morning.

I know now. For no mere trifle is Leonardo da Vinci hailed the world over, more than 500 years after executing this work.

A small painting, Mona Lisa fills her huge ‘new’ home. While I have appreciated many great paintings, the works of Rembrandt touching something deep in me especially, and have seen many representations of the work through the years, this – the real one – is something different. Quite extraordinarily for a portrait of a person, rather than the person herself, I felt without a shadow of a doubt that La Joconde has tangible presence; she’s breathing. Leonardo must have been entranced by her beautiful hands. We need both to look and to listen.

Back down to earth, we hired a pair of Vélib’ bikes for another whirlwind tour of the great and beloved sights of the city, and for windinmywheels.

Grande Vitesse

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tgv-trains-258285_1280
Photo at Pixabay

The TGV sped us out of Brittany for Paris this morning, our having first marvelled at the friendliness and service for breakfast at the SNCF Gare d’Auray. The contrast between this city and the riverside we’ll return to on Thursday couldn’t be more marked. Quiet enough in the former to hear sparrows’ wings, in 1st Arrondisement Paris there’s a well trained choir of sirens, car horns and bicycle bells. Outdoor supper watching the world passing by on a warm Paris evening is intoxicating.

Now, just before midnight, there’s no sign of a quietening outside the window behind which we’re thankfully installed, exhausted feet wondering what the heck happened today. Ah, but that walk along the Seine, the avenues of autumn coloured trees, the photos outside Notre Dame, and the ultra fab Apple Store at Carrousel du Louvre. I’ll joyfully remember where I downloaded MacOS Sierra! After just a couple of hours in this thrumming city we’ve got the hang of the buzz and the speed of the place again already. And one or two (hundred) photos!

Wind in their sails

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tourdefgolfe
Photo at 2CRG

We delighted in our annual Tour de Golfe this afternoon. The Gulf of Morbihan, home to 42 islands, is a sailor’s delight. It’s also a joy for photographers like me, and perfect (windy!) sailing conditions allowed for some spectacular shots of a grand regatta featuring perhaps 50 boats – each with four or five crew – in full sail. Add to that some truly spectacular fluffy cloud formations set in heights of deep cerulean blue, cormorants close-up, the glad familiarity of another returning, the best company, and a baguette picnic made up of ham, paté and smoked cheese, and I reflect that the later colours of the day made for splendid array.