January 2, 2011

so at the spur of the moment we fled our home Sunday afternoon and drove to Wendover. Yes, we went to a buffet, but really we went there to drive on the salt flats and get minimalist photos. We drove out to the smooth flats and away from everything, shortly all was behind us. Wide wide empty land. We drove out to the floating island mountains and began to climb. Rocks strewn everywhere, all kinds of rocks, lakeshore rocks, volcanic rocks, sedimentary rocks worn in fantastical shapes. Steep scree, so steep and loose that I lost my nerve. And crab walked back down. We got to the top and by then I really had dropped all the pts of the holidays. I was like a caged animal suddenly free. Eddie took picture after picture. The distant mountains, the curve of the earth. Breeze in my face, the January sun casting long shadows at noon. Sad runty scruffy desert shrubs. The shoreline of Lake Bomneville. Fossils. Speeding sort of across the salt. Oh glorious day. We talked about goals for the year. We slept a lot. We ate a lot. Welcome, 2011.

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Noah’s Ark

Noah's Ark

Rope burn and billowing sails

The chatter of cranes, spray on skin

and the red sails balloon twoard

nowhere. Death beneath.

All the cries for help lie drowning

below, wherever you go. Though

lions lie quiet, smiling to themselves,

you know. 

Let waves throw you.

Forget the past. Be brisk,

undulate, suffer cacophony.

You are atoning for this world

of fur and beak, wind and loss.

May 18, 2010

Finally made it to Versaille (after getting kinda lost). Not too impressed by all the gaudy splendor. Exploitation of the masses. Ed and I talked about the solution to poverty. He wants to solve it by creating equal opportunity. I say to do that would take an infinite number of law changes, and that won't happen. 

Came back and went to Orsay museum. Crowded with people. Not completely put together, because they are renovating. I can't remember the love we saw. I know we saw some…. dang….

Went to the Deportation monument and it made me cry.  (people imprisoned by Nazis)

Starving, bought bread and cheese.  "Talked" to an old lady sitting on our bench. Told her she had a chien adorable.  She did love her dog.

Went to Victor Hugo's house. Maybe he loved his wife but it seems as though he had a mistress he loved better. 

sat in the square there and watched kids playing joyfully. Mothers and their love. Kids and their love of running. 

Oh yes, saw Napoleon's tomb. The last word he spoke was Josephine, even though he'd ditched her years before in order to get an heir.

May 17, 2010

Devotion, devotion

They began building Notre Dame in the 1100s and finished it 200 years later. I think of the unknown, anonymous hands that carved stone, cut stone, laid stone, decade after decade. Those who fell to their deaths. (there had to be some)  Those who started it knew they wouldn't see it finished.

We talk to some couples from the U.S. in line for the tower. All in love and loving Paris. As we go up to the bell tower and gray-haired mother talks her Down Syndrome daughter down the stairs, who carefully sets one foot down and then the other. 

So cool to be up above Paris high up on the balcony of Notre Dame, seeing the same gargoyle where Randy snapped my picture 33 years ago!

More love:

Shakespeare and Co. is a love of books. Smells of books, passages and winding rooms, stuffed shelves, the love of writing, reading, books, books books. 

A book there called The Heart and the Bottle about love. I will get that. 

Climbing the hill to Montmartre, A mother helping her toddler come down a slide, catching him. A grandfather standing patiently while his young grandson climbs a rock wall. Eddie taking a picture of sycamore bark. Old men, white and gray, in jackets and caps, playing boules. A wysteria arbor, labor of love, gift of God.

Sacre Couer

Up in the dome, a young woman is giggling and another girl is snapping snapping snapping photos. Why all this noise? I think. I pass them and look back. Oh my gosh, she's laughing and crying and looking at her finger and the sparkle of a ring there. She is in tight jeans. The proposer looks pleased and shy, and smiles a little at me. Other couples recognize their joy and smile.

We look out over the city, which shines out there, new with love. Eiffel tower, arc d'triomphe, Notre Dame, everything. We are in a narrow passageway going around the dome. Columns frame the world. We have climbed up 300 stairs to get here, and to see an engagement was worth the 5-euro price. On the blackened stones are thousands of names, initials, voiclessly yearning to be eternal. 

Inside: A large Jesus spreads his hands across the dome. Gold gilds his sacred, flaming heart, which shoots our rays of golden light but is surrounded by a crown of thorns. He sends out a gold, jewel-studded halo from his sacred head. God the Father is up high, the Holy Ghost flies between them. Saints kneel in devotion. The altar is held up by golden saints. Tourists are hushed here; this is a church, not a tourist place. People stop to adore God, or art. Flickering candles are all around. We kneel and pray. Give me your heart, Jesus, make my heart shine with love.

Here are the words around the dome: _ss Mo Cordi Jesu Gallia Poenitens et devota et gratia.

Ed says he likes this Jesus, strong but kind. Rather sad..

A woman with a white scarf kneels and prays in front of us and does her rosary.  A worker walks across the sanctuary, stops and  kneels and prays, then walks on.

The French lost a war to Prussia in 1870 and thought it was because of sin. So the Catholics built this cathedral in penitence.

Dinner

A real french dinner in an outdoor cafe beneath a giant wisteria. The French waitress brings us a bottle of water, not too impressed by our wanting this. She is pretty, and has a nice French accent, strangely enough.

The food is delicious and artistic. Vegetarian salad like nothing you ever thought of before: spring greens, creamy cheese, quinoa with tiny bits of red and green pepper, skewers of fruit and cherry tomatoes, little cup of chopped tomato salad. French onion soup. Mmmm…

Chopin

In St. Julien de Pauvre, a 1200-ish church put up by the devout, Christ is on a cross above the altar and Chopin is floating through the air along with birdsongs. Eddie is dozing or meditating. He showed his love by bringing nus here. The saints listen to the sensuous caressing music, this waltz.

So do brass birds that hold up the lights above the altar. The window above shows a tree in the last low rays of sun.

Eddie taps my shoulder as if he were playing.

Gelato from Isle de St. Louis

Love. need I say more?

Oh, and besides the nocciola and chocolate, we kiss on the bridge above the Seine.

May 16, 2010 – Paris

To Paris:

Okay, so I’m not sure exactly why we’re going to Paris. We need to find a better reason to be here than just have fun.  I decide to look for love.

 In front of Heathrow (when we drive up to get on the second leg of our flight) a hefty balding man in a trenchcoat is hugging and hugging a slight woman—as if he cant let her go.

 In the airport, Ed says, Can I buy you breakfast? I take that as a loving gesture, but I know that he’s the one who’s hungry.

 I watch a birdlike woman with glasses low on her nose read The Mail (a tabloid). Her little hooked nose and receding chin, wrinkled like mine. She sits with her knees together and feet splayed.

 Ed comes back with hot chocolate, a chocolate muffin, and fruit. Ewww. I eat it and it makes nme sick. He tells me to walk around to feel better. I pass a young couple in a long motionless embrace. He steadies his bag with one hand and holds her with the other, ntheir cheeks together. When I turn and pass them again, I think I see tears or at least sadness in his eyes. A funeral? Bad news? Illness? Fragility?  It was tender.

 On the plane, the stewardess makes a special effort to find us a vegetarian snack. Love.

 We read Moroni 7. And then….

 We are here!  We finally get out of customs, the info line, the train, onto the streets of Paris! An American couple with backpacks, neither of them thin, kiss on the sidewalk. You can do that here. Ed tries to, obligatorily. I try to show love by letting him take pictures.

 So in the Louvre, love:

Madonnas and child. Madonnas weeping over dead sons. Ghirlandio’s portrait of the warty-nosed grandfather and child. Mary and Elizabeth her cousin. Ann, Mary and Jesus. Joseph’s look at Mary at their wedding. One of the three kings tenderly holding Jesus.

 People ogling and snapping Mona Lisa, loving the art that they have been told to love. A dad smiling down and playing with his baby in the stroller while everyone else looks at the Mona Lisa. He stares down with total love.

 Devotion to God in these paintings. Love to create, love enough to bring something into existence.

 We sit beneath the chestnut trees in the Tuilleries, while Eddie rubs my feet.

 Napoleon: He loved self, power, glory. He is laughable. If only he knew how ridiculous he seems now. The picture by David of his crowning—Inwonder if David was laughing at him too.

 At the Arc de Triomphe:  

“love” of country. We’re number 1!

Going home

I'm kinda mean to Ed. Not loving at all. Kinda mad at him for making us eat bad stuff all day, or for being hungry and tired all day. But he didn't MAKE me eat anything.  And he was hungry!!  So we wander home, and get lost, and his shoulder hurts and my feet hurt, and he needs to go to the bathroom SO bad, and I'm wondering why we came, and we finally–by sheer determination and dumb luck we find the hotel and I rub him and he rubs me and I remember love but can't figure out why my heart gets so hard sometimes. What's with that?

As always, I have to try again tomorrow. And I'll look for more love.

Well….that’s love for today.

May 15, 2010 – Leipzig

Schumann house

Schumann house, where they went to live the day after they got married. The sign says the euphoria of their coming together and the creativity of the two artists were brought together here (or something to the effect).  Their marriage certificate is here.

 People who visited them: Liszt, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Hans Christian Andersen, Wagner.

 Thankfully, at the end you can put on earphones and hear the Klavierkonzert op 54, Allegro affetuoso. Otherwise, it’s not such a cool museum.

 Instrument museum

But the instrument museum!  I almost didn’t go. But as I passed the Grassi museum complex, I decided to go in:  Oh my goodness, such works of art: lutes of all shapes and sizes and decoration. Viola d’amore, alt viola da gamba, tenor viola da gamba.  The scrolls are heads—cool faces and animals.

 There is an 11-stringed (plus drone) Lira da gamba—cello-like—built in 1612. Holy cow! There is a painting of Homer playing it. Don’t think so!

 Organs, processional poles (with a moon, clouds, cherubs, and bells), a bass with exquisite inlaid herringbone ivory the length of the fingerboard and tailpiece. The top is stamped with signatures and city names and dates.

 These are beautifully displayed in a dim room. Renaissance music floats through.

 A 5-foot-tall chitarone, like a lute but with 20 strings.  Teeny clavier in a box.

 Then in the next room Cristofori instruments, including the oldest surviving piano in the world! It’s a red case painted with oriental scenes and gold gilding around the edge. The keys are wooden and brown, four octaves of them.

 There are tiny thin violins from the 1600s-1700s—2 inches wide!  Called tanzmeistergeigen. They are inlaid delicately and intricately with mother of pearl and ivory. The scrolls are carved.

 These instruments are the crème de la crème. I guess peasant instruments didn’t survive. But you wouldn’t throw one of these in the trash. They are high art. The desire to make music shines out in these instruments, the desire to make art: inventiveness in different shapes, designs, and kinds of instruments. Before we standardized everything.

 A spinet by Cristofori blows me away. It’s so beautiful. I forgot to write down why.

 Then I see instruments from the 1500s called serpents. Yes, they are curved and folded like serpents. Made of wood, covered with leather, trimmed with brass. Wish I could hear them.

 A lute that is super-intricately inlaid all over with precious things in Moorish designs is also voluptuously shaped, thin-waisted, big-hipped and big breasted.

 I walk past newer things, past Edison phonograph players, a case of Ri

 Richard Jacob Weissgerber guitars. I wish Lawrence could see them! Wish he could see all of this.

 Upstairs is a room where you can play instruments. Kids and moms come and play digeridoos, rainsticks, steel drum, organ (watch the stops work), piano, clavier, cembalo (watch thes actions on these, drums, guitars, a cacophony of sounds. I can’t get the organ to play more quietly. A woman wearing earphones comes over and helps me. I ask her if it’s hard hearing all this noise every day and she smiles and nods a little wearily.

 Street musicians

I wanted to go find the toothless, disheveled old fiddler in front of Nikolaikirche and talk to him. But I can’t find him.

 But I go back to the main street. In front of the Galeria Kaufhof on Grimmaschstrasse the people in drab colors wander up and down at midday. The Spanish band that played earlier is taking a break. A guitar leans against the bench, the accordion on top. An accordionist has set up instead. He has his hat in front of him and plays faster and faster. Young parents and strollers, or couples, or singles, or friends, groups all going somewhere. A bunch of teens in costumes walk by. Everyone is Saxon looking, except the accordionist. No one drops a coin.

 His happy music sounds kind of desperate. A woman nibbles a pastry. A bearded, backpack-wearing wanderer pushes a baby pram. Everyone is bundled up.

 The musician slows down and changes gears. A young woman in a red parka talking to her friend steps over his hat. A woman with a shopping bag averts her eyes. Two kids standing nearby eat pizza. Nobody seems particularly happy.

 So—I go drop a coin in. The accordion is all beat up. His fingers must be cold. He has his jacket pulled up around his neck. The wind is cold, the sky is gray. There’s only one other coin in that hat. He nods at me and begins a new song in my honor. I look back and he’s looking at me.