Down By The River . . .

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What a crazy few weeks it has been. January is usually a quiet month at the straightjacket factory. But somewhere in the middle of the month things started going haywire. We got an order for 200000 straightjackets from the Ministry of the Interior in Tunisia. Then a week later we got another huge order for one million straightjackets from the Egyptian Bureau of Internal Affairs. This is the equivalent of our usual annual production. This explains why I haven't been around to your blogs these past several days, nor updated my own much. I've been busy trying to outsource subcontracted production of straightjackets from Haiti to Malaysia to China. We've had inquiries from the governments of Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. We were already doing brisk business with most of the industrialized world, where, for reasons at present poorly understood, more and more people are losing their marbles, but this latest round of collective upheaval caught us by surprise. We will of course rise to the challenge. We cannot allow people requiring the protection of a straightjacket to go un-jacketed. It's going to be a very good year for straightjackets I believe. Let's uncork a bottle of bubbly now to celebrate, what ?
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In the meanwhile, to try to clear out the mind the other day, and forget about the madness for a moment, la Grenouille and I set out to take a very quiet walk down along the banks of the Oise River, despite the bitter cold of a winter afternoon. We had barely stepped out of the house when I spotted a lifeless bird at my feet, camouflaged against the brown gravel with his brown feathers. The victim of some violence I fear. Most probably a cat.
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We got to our setting off point by the river, and took a quick look inside the lobby of the Hotel de l'Oise, which I'd never set foot in before, although I did a post about it a while back, which you can see here. In the vestibule there was a framed copy of a story which appeared in Paris Match magazine in the spring of 1991. The caption under the photo of Jim Morrison explains that the Oliver Stone movie about the Doors would soon be released in France, and mentions that 20 years previously, on June 28th, 1971, Jim and Pamela Morrison sat at a table in front of the Hotel de l'Oise, in the town of St Leu d'Esserent, and drank a beer. Five days later Jim died in the bathtub of his Paris apartment. So it's been nearly 40 years that Jim has been sleeping in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His music lives on.
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The river was oblivious to all, was just minding its own business, that of flowing, reflecting light, murmurring.
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On the path along the river's edge, a magnificent dog came racing toward us at an unbelievable speed. It turned out to be a Spanish Greyhound, which are much larger than plain Greyhounds. He had certainly the longest nose and longest neck I ever saw on a dog. I thought he might be part giraffe. He'd make short work of our cats I suspect.
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A navigational aid for river traffic, could maybe help riverside walkers also navigate the years of their lives.

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I don't know what the botanical name of this plant is, but it is quite common in these parts. With the setting sun behind it, I stopped to take a closer look, and was simply floored by the beauty in its curving forms.
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Nature goes to such incredible lengths to produce seeds and the means to spread them far and wide, on the wind, or clinging to a passing animal's fur. "Wildflower seed in the sailing wind..." !
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No, nature never ceases to amaze, with her subtle forms and shining light.

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I wouldn't want to forget a visit to James' Weekend Reflections to present these tree trunks on the water, for whatever they may be worth. Nothing fancy.

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