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france

Monday, November 05, 2001 10:20 AM
the latest update.
paris.

disappointing strike by all workers in all national museums prevents us from seeing the louvre and the pompideau centre (modern art). we respond by walking all over paris, visiting the picasso museum, walking through notre dame and climbing the stairs to an nice panoramic view of paris and closeups of the stone gargoyles on the roof, viewing the outside of the louvre (an impressive looking building with a rather nice set of 4 glass pyramids added to one of the courtyards of the surrounding stone and sculpture facade erected in napolean's time), touring the garden at the rodin museum with some of his famous statues (the thinker), going up to the top of the eiffel tower at night (at night the lights create neat shadows on the steel so it looks like its glowing hot; during the day its not so impressive although it is enormous),

witnessing another WWII ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier at l'arc de triomphe (we seem to hit these alot), and relaxing in the paris parks reading with the parisians on a gorgeous sunny day). oh, we also stopped at "shakespeare & co." a famous english bookstore which is a decrepid, falling apart building full of books with some beds where you can supposedly exchange working for a few hours for a bed in the bookshelves but we didn't have time to try it. instead we bought some books to read (in the park the next day) - an Updike book i wouldn't recommend, 'David Copperfield' by Dickens, and 'the Seven Storey Mountain' by Thomas Merton.

after paris we stopped by versailles. the outside of the building was rather drab i thought and the interior overall wasn't as ornate as i expected. mad king ludwig's castles (which were partially modelled after versailles) were more elaborate i thought, though the wall and ceiling paintings were better at versaille. nonetheless, the prince's staircase had some amazingly detailed stonework and the hall of battles was fairly impressive though tight with wall to wall paintings. on to chartres to see an old cathedral. it was pock-marked and worn but had to austure look of a long-life. the sun was going down so the stainglass was a little dark but still quite detailed and very abundant. we took turns going in to look around because the interior was so dark and our packs are bulky to wear around inside.

while laryn was inside i started talking with an old french man. after the usual, where are you from, i have relatives in canada, etc. he started trying to explain to me in broken english mixed with brief sputters of french that i should go to the 'rabbiland' which i eventually took to be another cathedral somewhere in the vincinity. he said he had gone there once, saw a snake crawl out of his skin and when he left he felt as though he had new skin as well. 'tres spiritual' he said. it was an odd shift in the conversation and i didn't give the response he hoped for, i guess, so he left.

in a strange misunderstanding of train schedules we then returned to paris and since the hostel was full we stayed the night on the street. actually we sat in the montparnasse train station - i reading while laryn took his turn of sleeping under the chairs - until security guards kicked us out at 1 or 1:30. then we walked towards notre dame to see if it was lit up, but it wasn't so we kept walking until we found a grate from the underground metro that had some warm air rising from it and stayed there until 4:30 (bought a pizza and watched people walking by) when we started towards the lyon train station. more uneventful waiting until we left for taize.

we decided to stay for a 'week of silence' at taize, a community of monks in southern france. when we got there the place was a zoo of people and quite loud so we were somewhat disappointed. but we soon found out that those who came to stay in silence were in a house off of the main dorm housing where the large groups from sweden and france were. we each had a private room with a bed, sink, bath and window overlooking the quite green and grayness of the grass, trees and stone walls and down into the rural valley away from taize. three prayer services a day in the chapel, called out by bells, and attended by everyone and brief, infrequent meetings with a brother were the only times we spoke. we also had a bible study each day led by another brother but it was lecture rather than discussion format. besides that we had the day to sit and think, read or write.

oh, there were also three meals a day with music and gesturing to pass the food and so on. it was a very enriching time of reflection on alot of different things. matt, i even had several hours on one day where i was sitting on a broken stone wall in the midst of a cow pasture and i thought about "be still and know that I am God". so i won't go into any details of what thoughts silence for a week can bring about or what taize was like because there are too many and there too interconnected right now and would take alot of time to explain.

so we left taize and now we're not in france anymore.

Patrick & Laryn