Bamboo Nursery . . .

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Just a little bit of a Parisian reflection here to render homage to James' Weekend Reflections series. I was wondering if they were raising bamboo in order to feed the elephant ? And are those really fishnet stockings or is that a figment of my imagination? And perhaps best to leave the bamboo roots confined to the interior of bottles, as otherwise they spread like crazy. . . One sees the oddest things wandering the streets of Paris in search of reflections.
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Our Pockmarked Past . . .

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I've been meaning to post these two photos since seeing some similar images of pockmarked walls in Beirut on Mary Anne's Beirut Pursuit blog which I've been enjoying of late. Whether from nearly a hundred years ago, as these walls are, in the village of Ablain Saint Nazaire, France, or from thirty years ago in Lebanon, or from ten years ago in Kosovo, or two years ago in Gaza, or one year ago in Iraq, or yesterday in Somalia; pockmarked walls tell sad stories of our inability to solve our differences without unleashing explosive hatred on each other. For as long as history has been written, and no doubt longer, this has been the case. Is there any hope for the human race ? I wonder.
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Ablain Saint Nazaire is in the north of France, in the Pas de Calais area, in the shadow of the hill known as Notre Dame de Lorette, where one hundred thousand men died trying to take the crest of the hill during World War One. The church, or what's left of it, is from the fifteenth century.
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Well Son of a Beach !

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I gotta hand it to James at Newtown Area Photo, when he came up with the idea of creating a Reflections Weekend, he set a good thing in motion. And now months later, people are dropping in from all over the world every weekend to leave links to their reflection photos. So if you have a moment, do drop on over there, and take a peek at some of the many reflections, you may just find yourself hooked like I did. But then I always loved a good reflection. All that light out there bouncing around all day long; sometimes it gets sort of crazy. Or even totally fractured, like this one :
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Which was a detail of a larger piece . . .
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A whole series of reflections here . . .
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Which was a detail of this :
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Guess this was someone's idea of humor ?
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Signs of Love . . .

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Despite all the horrors in the press, one can only hope that love will prevail in this world. And there are signs of it all around us . . . even if rusting . . .
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An eternal sign . . . chiseled in stone . . .
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The word . . . Love . . .
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Think of how many "She loves me, she loves me not" could be whispered with petals like these . . .
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Beauvais Cathedral Re-visited . . .

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This post is dedicated to anyone who has visited Beauvais Cathedral, and to anyone who has not visited Beauvais Cathedral, or to those who might have done neither . . . Don't hesitate to go prepare a bowl of Japanese tea before perusing these photographs at your leisure.
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Back in a post on the 11th of June I recounted how I'd gone back to visit Beauvais Cathedral again for the second time in two weeks, to take another look, a solitary look, taking time to gaze more closely at certain details. That was just after the post on June 9th which displayed a few photos taken several days previously in and around the cathedral. I noticed while assembling the photos for this short pictorial essay, that all the images were in portrait layout, as opposed to landscape, for the simple reason that Beauvais Cathedral is all about heights which reach up enthusiastically toward the sky. Landscape format just couldn't do any justice to such a structure; the highest of its kind in Europe.
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The exterior transept and choir, from a bit of a distance . . .
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The south transept's gorgeous gothic facade . . .
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Beauvais Cathedral, started in the 1100's, was never completed. There is a rather severe slate-covered wall where the nave should have joined the transepts.
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At the base of the north transept . . .
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The north entrance doors, details of which were shown in the previous post about Beauvais on 9 June . . .
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The astronomical clock in the cathedral is one of the wonders of clock-making engineering in the world, with 90000 parts . . .
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Structural supports were added about 15 years ago to prevent another collapse.
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The pillars just go up and up and up . . .
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To take this next one I lay down on my back on the floor . . .
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The First World War is remembered here. There is a plaque identical to this one in the Senlis Cathedral.
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An ancient fresco . . .
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There is currently work in progress to protect and preserve the cathedral. The stairs in the scaffolding here made me think of Stairway to Heaven . . .
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Writing on the Wall . . .

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If you were to travel to the small town of Arras in northern France, and managed to find this facade of one of my dream houses, you would be very close to the stretch of wall where the following photos were taken. Mysteries abound in this life, and messages left on walls, then torn off, leaving enigmatic traces, have always caught my eye, and can easily tempt me to stop and tarry, trying to gain some insight . . .
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It was on the tip of my tongue

But I couldn't quite remember

A message I'd seen long ago

Perhaps in the pages of a book

From the library

Checked out in childhood

Perhaps from a bathroom stall

Where messages of vital importance

Were scrawled that we saw

While on the road across a continent

Stopping where we could for sustenance

And for relief in squalid roadside restrooms

In campgrounds where all walks of life

Rubbed shoulders and left messages

On walls or scribbled on napkins

In a chrome covered diner

I just can't quite bring it into focus

There was something that seemed

Momentous, inspiring, nearly infinite

Yet the more I try to hear the words again

The further they recede through a mirage

In the morass of clamoring words

All vying for attention

All claiming to be the true word the one word

A cacophonous howling of wolves

And yet the essence of the message

Hovers just out of sight

On the fringe of the forest

Just in the shadow beyond the edge of the trees

Refusing to emerge into the daylight

Coy, teasing, infuriating, maddening

I want to yell myself hoarse

I heard the message long ago

But didn't think to write it down

Now it has gone on to hidden realms

Leaving just the faintest memory

Which I wish I could share with you

But I wouldn't know how to begin

To describe it

So I search for it always

On walls

Hoping against hope

That the writing on a wall somewhere

Will serve as the key

To unlock this memory

For now only the walls remain

And their mysteries
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Exile is not a material thing, it is a moral entity.

All corners of the Earth are worthy.

All places where dreaming happens are ... ???

As long as the place is ... ???

And the horizon is ... ???

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Beware of the Monster . . .

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In the summertime in France, there are a few small circus operations that criss-cross the land, setting up their tents for a few days at a time here and there, putting on their shows under the big top, doing their best to amaze and entertain mainly small children, whose parents probably saw such events as children, and who want to pass on and share those memories with their own offspring.
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I have to admit, I have quite mixed feelings about circuses. I hate to see animals that should by all rights be wild, in cages. Usually in fairly squalid conditions. Tigers should be roaming dark jungles, not pacing a cage. Camels should be out in a desert somewhere, not in northern France tied to a stake in the ground. Zebras should be out on the African plains, worrying perhaps about lions, but not behind bars in a circus.
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On the other hand, were it not for zoos and circuses, many children might never see some of these large animals which are not native to their country. I'm not sure if that small redeeming value can justify such spectacles, but there is not much I could do to change these things, even if I wanted to. Surreptitiously setting the animals free around here would be crueler than letting them continue their caged existence, they would either become roadkill or be hunted down and caught again, or killed if not caught.
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It was the elephant here that caught my eye as I was driving to work the other day, I made a mental note to return with camera in hand . . . (Lydia, if you see this, note the "Lydia" on the trailer here . . .)
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Their camel was calling out, "Step up, step up, come one, come all !!", while showing off his strong set of teeth !
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Lions were roaring . . . silently . . .
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These two were holding a little secret meeting, maybe plotting their escape ?
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There were some amazing beasts to be seen. Would not want to get gored by this fellow . . . Shucks, if they turned him loose in the streets of Pamplona, he could skewer a whole shishkabob of runners on those long horns of his . . .
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All manner of creatures, great and small, were to be found there . . . even a goat.
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Tired of pacing the cage, he toppled over, one paw raised, even in sleep not forgetting the heavy gauge wire of the cage . . .
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But the most surprising sight that afternoon was the zebra, who after tiring of browsing the sparse grass, decided to chomp on a tasty looking green tee shirt that stepped a bit too close. The boy squealed with shock, and the zebra let go. The message on the boy's shirt seemed perfectly appropriate : "Beware of the Monster" !
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Another Dog Day Afternoon . . . Or... Remedy for Heat Wave

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Out for a walk just the other afternoon, admiring the primroses on the Place du Chateau, and looking a little dubiously at the rather green water, wondering if green water is suitable for reflections, given that it is almost Friday and will soon be time for James' Reflections weekend . . . There was indeed a bit of a green around the gills reflection. . .
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But then I suddenly realized that not only was the water a rather brilliant green, but that it was inhabited with life, and the life in the water was swimming toward me. . .
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And it wasn't alone !
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What could be more thoroughly serious than, "Stick... get the stick ! Swim at same time, but get the stick !" ? Total concentration on that furrowed brow . . .
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Talk about making a splash !
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Our cat Amande just shook her head when she saw these photos . . . and went off in a huff . . .
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