Ghosts of Saint Leu . . .

While looking for Jim Morrison's ghost the other day, as previously noted below, in Saint Leu d'Esserent, a backwater town on the Oise River which has seen better days, a few odds and ends caught my roving eye ; a green door needing, or not needing depending on your perspective, a new coat of paint, an abandoned factory all closed up, and a couple of signs just waiting patiently for someone to come along and appreciate their unique nature. . .

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This sign was so far gone to rust I couldn't even begin to make out what it might have said once upon a time. . .

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Nature's Graffiti . . .

Just outside the abandoned building with graffiti on it photographed yesterday in Saint Leu (while looking for Jim Morrison's ghost, or maybe for himself if he didn't really die in July 1971 as some people have said, like Elvis) there were these crimson colored shrubs that had held onto last Fall's brilliant decorations all Winter long. . . it was tough to get a good shot between the brilliant sun on the Saint Leu Basilica in the distance and the deep shade these shrubs were it. . . but I tried ! You'll give me an "A" for effort, right ?!?

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Shooting more in the shade it became possible to show you how bright the color was here. . . personally, if I had to choose between the brightly colored graffiti on the abandoned building shown below, and Nature's splash of graffiti color here. . . well, I'll take Nature any day. . .

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Basilica of Saint Leu d'Esserent. . .

As mentioned in a couple of posts earlier today, I was walking in Saint Leu d'Esserent looking for Jim Morrison's ghost. No trip to St Leu would be complete without hiking up the hill to the ancient basilica. . . you can see what a beautiful afternoon it was. Quite a ways further down in these pages I posted two black & white photos of sculpture details from the middle ages, two tongued figures. I had totally forgotten where those photos had been taken, but visiting the St Leu basilica today I saw those sculptures again, thus remembering where the photos had come from. And here are a few more in color in the same vein. . . this is what I love about living in France. . . heading out for a late afternoon walk. . . and finding oneself immersed in history a thousand years old.

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Scatological Reporting. . .

Between the Hotel de l'Oise where Jim Morrison stopped for a beer a few days before he died, and the abandoned industrial building illustrated just below here, there was also an abandoned house with inviting doors and windows gaping wide open, so naturally I went in for a look around. The place had all the modern trappings of the typical abandoned house : the hideous wallpaper peeling over an ancient upholstered chair, the enigmatic fuse box with three circles, and last, but not least, the wrecked toilet which will never again serve its intended purpose. . . pardon my scatological reporting. . .
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Saint Leu !

While rambling around Saint Leu d'Esserent this afternoon, as mentioned in below post on the Hotel de l'Oise, almost immediately adjacent to the Hotel where Jim Morrison had french fries and beer a few days before he died in 1971, I stumbled into a large abandoned industrial building facing the Oise River that had obviously seen better days, and had been converted into a wreck of a hall, no doubt used for illicit rave parties. . . Some of the graffiti artists working these walls had an obvious penchant for some well known American characters . . .

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Hotel de l'Oise

After visiting Jim Morrison's tomb in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris the other day, I was reading an account of the last days of his life on this web site, and was surprised to see that he had visited the Chateau at Chantilly, my home town, on June 28th, 1971, just a few days before he died on 3 July, 1971. That same day he also went to the small town of Saint Leu d'Esserent, which is just a short distance from Chantilly. So this afternoon, just out of curiosity, and because it was the first really nice Spring day we've seen so far this year, I wandered over to St Leu to poke around a bit. According to the above mentioned web site, this is the Hotel de l'Oise where Jim, Pamela, and a friend Alain Ronay had french fries and beer. . . this photo is a little better than the one on that site. . . I found no trace or reference to Jim's passage here shortly before he left this world.

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