Forget It

It is very educational working at the Big Blue Box Store, and not just in regard to tools and DIY supplies. It also affords me a course in contemporary music, thanks to the continuous feed that plays all day and probably all night over the PA system.

It's to my advantage that I'm hearing these songs with no clue to who the singers or songwriters are.  This way I can appreciate them without thinking, "Oh, yes.  That's that girl who was caught one night last week throwing her underwear to the seagulls at Venice Beach."   Or whatever.  No, it's just me and the music.

And a lot of it isn't half bad.  Pretty good, actually.  The songs are creative and varied, their singers using diverse vocal techniques (I recognize some from the exposure I got to Estill voice training in choir a couple years ago) to great effect.

Nevertheless, these songs as a group don't do a lot for me.  They run through my head when I'm not at work, but like a rat runs through cheese, mindlessly.  I have no urge to sing them, or identify with them, or in any way make them my own.

I've wondered why.  And it's seemed to me that it's because I'm just too old.  Not too old for the music, but too old for the subject of most popular songs:  romantic love.  I've lived without it for so long.  It's been the late '90s since there's been anyone I was interested in, seriously or not.  By now the whole thing seems foreign and irrelevant.  I've got my life course set, and guys and relationships have no part in it.  Even if I had time to date anyone, I doubt I could be bothered to gin up the requisite feelings for him.  I doubt I could if I tried.

At least, that's how I thought about it until recently.  Recently, however, I discovered the old nerve endings are not dead after all.  How I learned that is not important, since I also discovered that the situation was, shall we say, not eligible.  So much for that.

Nevertheless, here I am, having to admit that on my side, at least, the popular songs could provide a soundtrack for me, should an appropriate man come along.  Nice to know that part of me isn't dead after all.

Still, maybe I'm back where I started after all.   A few weeks ago I was waiting on a customer at the store.  He had a lot of explaining to do regarding his home improvement project, and as I stood patiently listening to him, it hit me:  This man, were he single, would be an example of someone of suitable age for me to date.  And I rebelled:  Impossible!  He's old enough to be my father!  He looks old enough to be my grandfather!

And me, I probably look old enough to be my grandmother, too.

So, forget it.  It's not happening.  So  for me the contemporary popular songs, while musically interesting, will have to remain emotionally opaque.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Twenty-six

Saturday, 31 December, 1988
New Year’s Eve/Silvesterabend
Wien

HOTEL DREI KÖNIGE-- Didn’t get up as early as I perhaps should’ve, but the body refused.

Had the included breakfast in the hotel Speisezimmer. Kaiser rolls with butter and jam. This is odd. I never would have thought of Kaiser rolls for breakfast.

Lost a good half hour at the hotel desk waiting for the clerk to get off the phone. I needed to recover my passport and ask a question or two. For my patience he gave me a piece of the chocolate New Year’s gelt he was playing with.

Up the street and bought a bottle of sparkling wine for tonight’s party, as Rollo* had requested. Had to be done now since the stores would be closing early today. Also got a little jar of my traditional pickled herring.

Dropped that back off at the room then went to the Opernpassage to see about music tickets. Came away with one for Beethoven’s Ninth at the Konzert Haus tomorrow (not cheap. Close to $30 maybe) and one to Mozart’s Don Giovanni for Monday. Got about the last tickets.

Even so, I’m sorry these necessary errands kept me from seeing the Lippizaner rehearsal this morning. It was the last one for the season.

It was funny dealing with the girl at the counter, though. She wanted to work on her English and I on my German, so she'd speak to me in English and I'd reply in German and somehow, it worked!

I didn’t like the exchange rate at the info office nor the fee so since I was going over there anyway for Otto Wagner’s sake, I rode to Schwedensplatz and walked to the main post office, which was the only one open today. Stood in a nice long line then had it turn out that their rate wasn’t much better. Too late now. Bought some stamps, too.

Not as fine a day as yesterday but the sun was trying to come out. Made a decent effort to shine a little as I photographed the Postsparkasse exterior.

Blundered my way over to the Stephensplatz. The area around the cathedral was pretty well populated. I was starting to get hungry but the Konditorei were so crowded you could hardly squeeze in. Anyway, I’d noticed a sign pointing the way to the house where Mozart wrote Marriage of Figaro and I thought I’d better check its opening hours, before I took the time to feed my face.

Good thing I checked. It was 3:15 by now and the house was only open till 4:30, and it wouldn’t be open tomorrow or Monday.

I suppose it can’t be helped, but the place is kept as a museum, alone. There isn’t even as much furniture as there is at Berlioz’s birth house, just display cases with artifacts and things hanging on the walls. Many of the latter were silhouettes, drawings, or paintings of people who I must assume had some influence on Mozart’s life and work. But not knowing that many details thereof I wasn’t particularly edified by these exhibits. There was one room that I really think must’ve been the kitchen . . . that came closest to helping me get a feeling of Mozart actually having lived there.

All the Vienna-based composers’ residences are administered by one authority, and I saw from a poster that Beethoven’s most frequent domicile, the Pasqualati House on the Mölker Bastei, was also open only today, till 4:30. So I bade Wolfgang farewell and hurried over there.

There’s more of Beethoven himself there, more of his furniture and possessions, and more paintings and sculptures of the man done in his lifetime. And I could see the good views he had to the west, though thankfully he never had to look at the modern monstrousity now standing across the street. But still, it was merely an intellectual exercise remembering that he wrote Fidelio and the Violin Concerto there.

It wasn’t till I was heading back down the stairs from the 4th floor† apartment that it hit me with a shock that he, Ludwig von Beethoven, actually had lived here, he had walked in this narrow space, on these winding steps, had seen and probably touched these plastered walls-- Gott in Himmel!

Retraced my steps to the Stephensdom, trying to find something to eat. On der Graben I bought a cone of roasted chestnuts, the first I’ve had, to shut my stomach up. They’re really more like a vegetable than a nut in taste, but I liked them well enough. And they were good and warm.

Finding dinner tonight was a bit difficult. Seemed as if all the places that looked appetizing or inexpensive enough (and also the ones that didn’t) were getting ready for the Silvester parties and not serving walk-ins. I finally settled for a wurst on a roll off a stand in the Kärtnerstrasse and then went and sat down in the Konditorei next door and had me a piece of Sachertorte mit Schlag.

You know what? It wasn’t as marvellous as I’d expected. It was rather dry, not tremendously flavorful, and left me yearning for another piece of that wonderful chocolate torte I had in Paris.

The Kärtnerstrasse and indeed the whole area south of the Stephensplatz was teeming with people. There were even some street evangelists. And down by the Staatsoper a couple of guys had a drag race off the stoplight. Some things know no boundaries . . .

Back at the hotel I read a bit of the Beethoven booklet I’d bought and ate pickled herring til time to dress and catch the U-Bahn to Rollo’s mother’s. Heading for the Karlsplatz I wondered what it’d be like coming back after midnight. The streets between there and the Schleifmühlgasse aren’t as lively as I’d like after dark; tonight would they be too lively?

When I got to Rollo’s mother’s place, I could’ve shot her elder son! He hadn’t told me what to wear and there I was in my gray flannels, silk blouse, green Shetland sweater, and red and black suede hiking boots, while everyone else, including Rollo, was in semi-formal party clothes. It was really a sight to see him in a smoking jacket. I didn’t mind so much what I had on; it’s just that I get so few chances to dress up and had a perfectly good dress with me.‡

Besides Rollo and Connie* [Rollo's wife] and his mother, there was Rollo’s brother, Marko* (who seems to have some slight mental or other functional handicap), and several of Frau Schipfner’s* middle aged to elderly friends. All or most of them spoke at least a little English, which made me feel better about trying out my German.

We started out with aperatifs; I had Rollo pour me a Campari and soda because I was curious to taste what it was like. But it’s rather bitter and I didn’t drink much of it.

When I saw the dining room table I realized it had been silly of me to go looking for something to eat earlier. As seems customary in this part of the world, the fare was sliced meats and various sorts of pasta salad, and a great deal of it.

On each plate was a little good luck token. I was informed by the woman on my left that I must immediately take and put it in my purse and thus assure I’d have plenty of money all year. Can’t hurt, I guess . . .

On the table were little figures of chimney sweeps and pigs, and the napkins were printed with these and with four-leafed clovers, all symbols of luck and prosperity. I’d wondered what all those stalls were, downtown, but now I saw the Viennese wouldn’t consider a Silvesterabendtafel complete without these favors.

A toast was drunk before the meal, the woman on my left looking at me and pledging, "To your honeymoon." Does she know something I don’t? I thought for a moment she was really addressing Rollo, on my right, but that’s impossible: he and Connie have been married three years.

In the table talk I learned that the obnoxious newspaper vendor is probably Egyptian, since most are and the Turks aren’t advanced enough socially to take such jobs. And that Sachertorte generally is dry, which is why you need the whipped cream.

Unlike in Switzerland, I could at least tell what the German conversation was about, even if I couldn’t discern the tenor of the comments. I commented on this to the lady on my left, she laughed, and that started a general raillery against what these Hoch Deutsch speakers called "Sweetzer Dootsh," or some such teasing appellation. Still being angry at Lukas’s* uncalled-for extension of his performance in that dialect last week, I took a rather unChristian pleasure in hearing it mocked.

When it came time for dessert everyone got up from the table and adjourned back to the living room. Rollo and Connie and Marko shut themselves into the kitchen for a smoke and to get things ready, while Frau Schipfner cleared away. When dessert was put on, she started herding people back into the dining room, and I said, "Ja, wir kommen! Wir kommen augenblicklich!"

"Oh, you speak German very well!" she exclaimed.

(Thank you, Ludwig von Beethoven.††)

By the time dessert was finished, it was about fifteen till midnight. Back in the living room, the champagne (or rather, Austrian Halb-süß) was broken open and glasses filled. They turned the TV on; it was an ice show being broadcast from here in Vienna, but when the skaters did a routine to the song "One" from A Chorus Line, it was sung in English. I thought of Nigel*-- it was inevitable.

Then the time came and the great dial on the screen ticked off the seconds: "Zehn, neun, acht, sieben, sechs, fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins-- Prosit Neue Jahr!"

At least, that’s what was being shouted by all and sundry as the wine glasses clinked and the sparkling drunk down. As for me, I was praying blessings on a certain Englishman, who despite his very taken (if not engaged) state, still can make any new year worth entering.

Meanwhile, on the screen was a little animation number of champagne corks dancing to a Strauss waltz. Cute.

Rollo and Marko got out the fireworks and went out on the balcony to shoot them off. The skies had cleared and all over this suburb of Vienna the heavens were blazing with the trails of rockets and shooting stars making merry war with their repeated noise. The neighbors downstairs came out to shoot theirs and shouted up, "Prosit Neue Jahr!"

We came back in and drank some more ersazt champagne (I’m glad I tasted the real thing on Christmas. It is better) and conversed. I asked Connie if women in the Midwest were wearing big shawls, as they do in England. She said yes, they were.

Around 2:00 AM we ate again, going back to the dining room for soup. I think I ate more tonight than I have in entire weeks on this trip.

About 3:00 everyone decided it was time to shove off home. Rollo’s mother earlier had said it was best I go home in a taxi and not risk the Viennese lager louts at the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station. But one of the ladies said they could cram me into her car, despite the fact they already had six full-grown adults booked to ride in it-- "We’ll pretend you’re a baby. It’s not legal to have more than six adults, but a baby is all right."

So everyone said their goodbyes and final New Year’s wishes to Frau Schipfner. But before I went I asked Rollo to please tell me, quickly, about the office. . . .

[Here ensued some architectural shop talk interesting to me at the time but not relevant to the occasion.]
It was jolly crowded in that car, which was only a mid-sized VW. Never mind me, I think one of the old men had regressed in age. I can see that he might be more comfortable with his arm stretched across the back of the seat, but squeezing my shoulder while he was at it really was not required. Nothing threatening, but I was glad when we dropped him and his wife (yes!) off at their flat near the Schönbrunn Palace.

It was nearly 4:00 AM when I was dropped off at the hotel. I didn’t go to sleep immediately. I’ve decided to revive my Song for the Year custom; for 1989 it’s to be "An die Müsik"; and while I was running my Schubert tape back to listen to it, I thought about the Waldstein Sonata and how I couldn’t recall the Rondo theme at the Beethoven house, getting it mixed up with that of that Opus Posthumous piano trio movement. I listened to the Waldstein Rondo, too, therefore, and see that recall is all in the opening intervals-- the OP starts in an ascending minor second, the Waldstein on a melodic unison. I tried it a few times and it works like a charm.

Anyway, that’s only more or less relevant to what I’ve chosen for 1989, and no unattainable men are in it:

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Studen,
wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden,
hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt,
in eine beßre Welt entrückt!

Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harpf entflossen,
ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir,
den Himmel beßre Zeiten mir erschlossen,
du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür,
du holde Kunst, ich danke dir!

________________________________
†By European reckoning; 5th floor by American.
‡As I'd known him in the States, Rollo did the European casual look straight down the line. I'd never seen him in anything other than a long ponytail, an open-necked shirt, and Birkenstock sandals with heavy socks. He wouldn't condescend to wear a suit and tie, not even for a client meeting at our architecture office. So I'd figured it'd be the same here in Vienna!
††"We're coming! Yes, we're coming in the blink of an eye!"-- a handy phrase I'd memorized from the spoken dialogue of Beethoven's opera Fidelio.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Thirteen

Sunday, 18 December, 1988
Paris

Woke up around 7:00 AM with a stomachache. It was either food poisoning, indigestion, the flu that’s going around, or the approach of the wrong time of month. I chose to believe the last, having pills on hand to throw at that condition. So I took them then went back to sleep.

Nevertheless I did not feel too wonderful all day. Considered not getting up for Mass (à la Mexico City, 1970†) but decided I’d regret it if I didn’t.

So I put on my gray dress and went to Mass at Notre Dame. It’s rather odd-- the organ plays and they have readings and so forth between services. Meanwhile people are walking around taking pictures-- with flash-- and it’s a real zoo. Fortunately things calmed down for the service itself.

There was a copy in French and in three other languages of the readings. What I need is that and the actual eucharistic liturgy, in French. A copy of the sermon wouldn’t hurt, either. The priest spoke, I believe, on not making Christmas a surface thing. Very edifying, I’m sure, if I could’ve understood it.

I still did not feel at all well and hoped to gracious I would not have one of my famous Raging Hormonal Imbalances right in the middle of the service. But I survived to go up and take Communion (one kind only), and to come back to my seat and lose it.

Emotionally, I mean. It wasn’t being there, per se, that did it. It was more the feeling of oh, God, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, and if You don’t let me know, who will? I asked Him to give me some kind of sign as to what He wants me to do . . . somebody bringing something up in a conversation, maybe. I don’t know. What did He give Jim Leffel*‡ when he was struggling over accepting the call to Wilkes-Barre*?

Outside afterwards there was a rather ragtag group in front of the cathedral singing Christmas carols-- in English-- for the Armenian earthquake relief (and that’s what happened there, on top of the delicate political situation).

I headed north and had a bottle of Perrier at the first café I found open. I needed the bubbles. Stomach lousy. Between the Pompidou Center and Les Halles I made myself buy a crepe and eat it, but I wasn’t too happy about it.

Still, there were things I had to do today so I pushed myself. Had to find a florist to sell me some real flowers, for one. And as long as I was fairly close, I thought I’d go up to the Boulevards and see where Berlioz went to music school.

Found the fleurs first, near the rue Montmartre. I had to decide what he would like. I settled on a bunch of those small tulips, yellow and white and dark pink and variegated, with their green stems and leaves. Freesias would’ve done well, too, but the only ones they had were all yellow and looked like cheese popcorn. Definitely wrong.

Walked on over to where the Conservatoire is supposed to be, but unless there is another place in Paris with streets named rue Bergère and rue Faubourg de Montmartre, they’ve demolished the building that was there in the early 19th century and moved the school elsewhere.§ Still, to think that he walked there once, on that pavement, and passed through that air!

Took the Métro to Havre-Canmartin, where I encountered a check. The #13 line, which I needed for both la Cimetière Montmartre and for St. Denis [to see the famous abbey church] was closed. Went on to Villiers to at least reach the former and discovered the #6 line wasn’t going today, either. Transit strike on. So I went back to the Place Europe stop and walked it from there.

The cemetery is under the Rue Calincourt overpass, unlike what is shown on my map. Found the entrance down below, though, and inquired of the uniformed porter where to find it . . . Hector’s got a lane named after him there. And he’s not under the viaduct, thank God.

French urban cemeteries aren’t like American ones. They don’t go in for green grass and well-tended plots. They tend to be little necropoles of miniature chapels and temples all jumbled in cheek by jowl with only drear, sandy soil between.

But thank God, somebody has done something about that ghastly Beaux Arts horror of a tomb that Hector originally had, the picture of which I saw in a book in the Philadelphia Free Library. It was all redone in 1970 in black Andes granite (or something similar) with gold in the incised lettering. The portrait on the medallion isn’t as beautiful as it should be, it doesn’t properly convey his character, but everything is very well tended, there are cyclamens, the pretty dark pink kind, and healthy-looking shrubbery growing in pots that are an integral part of the monument, not like the desiccated chrysanthemums on some nearly tombs, and-- oh, God, Berlioz! Berlioz! I can’t-- I wish-- Oh, Lord, I-- and he’s-- I can’t express it!

One doesn’t go to pieces totally. One mustn’t. There are other people around every so often. And it’s not like he died recently or anything . . . let us be sensible.

I could take refuge in activity. I could at least give him what I brought him. Someone who came earlier had left him a bunch of white chrysanthemums (I was glad to see that); I unbound my tulips and laid them across the other flowers. And I knew I’d chosen the right thing. They’re like him, in a way. Straightforward, unpretentious, colorful in their way, but still sensitive to the rigors of the mundane.

There’s a tree there . . . its roots probably grow down into his grave. It’s very handy when you have no other shoulder to cry on . . . Though I’ve cried on his shoulder often enough, figuratively, singing his songs and reading his memoirs and his letters, taking comfort in knowing there was one who has been through it himself, who could express it all so as to draw it up into ineffable poetry and beauty, one who despite his sins and failings took the gift that God gave him and used it, sublimely . . . I couldn’t help it, I prayed again the prayer I’ve said for the past eleven years, that please, God, in Jesus’ Name, if he can’t actually be saved-- and if there’s any proper way he could be, please effect it!-- please allow his faithfulness to his gift and all the good he’s done through its fulfillment speak grace and amelioration for him in the judgement! Please!

There’s a cross engraved above his name on his monument. I hope it is not there for naught. I wish I could believe the Roman Catholic doctrine that you can be saved by being baptised as an infant. I cannot, but it would be a comfort.

I tried to sing the Te Decet Hymnus for him but my voice broke-- "Ad Te caro omnis veniet!" Yes, but how-- and in what spirit?

There were some fuzzy cats roaming around (none of them black) and one approached now and sat a little ways off, preening herself. I went over and patted her, and, unusually for a French cat, she responded to it. If she’d been [my own cat] Didon I’d’ve picked her up, but she was not.

Then I went back and stood once more before la noire tombe-- mon pauvre Hector! Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine!-- kissed my hand to him, and departed.

Hélas!

Found la Square Berlioz after that, not far from la Place Clichy. The statue there is of him as a younger man than on the medallion of the tomb. It was not carved out of very high quality stone-- it has deteriorated badly. I dislike seeing that. And somehow, though I’m glad he is honored in public sculptures like that, somehow seeing them makes him seem more distant, unlike the portraits. I’ve read that his portrait by Courbet is said to be the only one by that artist that has a spark of life. If so, I’m glad it was Hector’s. Nothing can portray him that does not give you those piercing, wonderful eyes.

The square is largely given over to a large sandbox where children play, and sandy paths where the kids were kicking around a soccer ball. I wonder what he’d think of having his statue placed in a playground. He wasn’t much good at children, except for his son Louis.

Since going to see the abbey church of St. Denis was a bust and it was getting on towards 4:00 anyway, I took the Métro back downtown and got off at the Opéra stop. Had to look at the building which, while not the one that Hector knew, yet houses the institution that only opened its doors to him once.

Ironically, they did the Damnation de Faust, as I saw on a poster in the lobby, on the 8th. If I’d known that I could’ve come in from Chartres, no problem. Damnation, indeed.

They had tours but I just didn’t feel up to it. Browsed the gift shop; they had enamelled composer pins, even one of Hector. But they were just too expensive: 70F.

Over then to les Galeries Lafayette to see if maybe they were running the same sale on slips their branch in Toulouse was.

They weren’t; moreover the only suitable kind of slip they did have was running 225F each and was made in the good old USA. I think I’ll wait till I get back to Oxford.

Close one on the escalator there. It was full of people and as we rode upwards, a fairly good-sized man in his 60's lost his balance just ahead of me. Only my never-that-strong and presently very fatigued left arm and hand desperately clutching the rail kept him and me and everyone else from falling like dominoes. I don’t even think I was holding the righthand rail. I just stiffened up and hoped he’d get his balance before I gave way, too. When he made a grab for the rail he pushed into me worse and I had to step back, crunching the toes of the guy behind me (who wasn’t being any help, I might add). Fortunately the older man regained his footing at that point and aside from a little soreness, I was ok.

Still can’t figure out how I did that. I was feeling extremely yucky. Thank God I was able to, though.

The store was packed with Christmas shoppers and decorated to the hilt. (It’s the same all over, isn’t it?) And then it has that immense stained glass dome over the central court.

Back towards the hotel on the Métro (I might use the busses if I had a bus map. But I don’t, so I don’t). Really dragging by now. Figured I’d better find some food though so I got some junk at a croissanterie on Boul. St. Michel.

Got it and me up to the room-- and just couldn’t face it. Changed my clothes and climbed under the bedspread. Was not going to make it to the organ concert at Notre-Dame at 5:45. No. Listened to the radio, BBC World Service. They were airing their worldwide request program, and played the Hallelujah Chorus. And for the third time today I broke down and cried. Oh, Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Made myself work at train schedules for the next two days but other than that accomplished nothing but sleep all evening.
__________________________
†I was part of a high school group that took an Easter weekend trip to Mexico that year. On the Saturday, I, like an idiot, Drank the Water, and woke up the next morning too sick to go to the American church for Easter service. Happily, it was a mild case of MR and passed off by late that afternoon.
‡The immediate past pastor of my home church in Kansas City.
§Turns out I'd come up with the wrong address. The old Conservatoire building was and is still there, three or four blocks away from where I was looking for it.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twelve

Saturday, 17 December, 1988
Paris

Night on the train from Toulouse wasn’t bad, once I got the guy who was standing in the vestibule to turn off his ghetto blaster and more or less stopped the squeak my suitcase was making.

They wake you up by intercom fifteen minutes before arrival. I took their word for it when they said they wanted everyone ready to get off by the time the train got in.

La gare d’Austerlitz is pretty bleak, especially at 7:00 AM on a dark winter’s morning. Had a cup of hot chocolate for the warmth and for change for the locker, then stashed my gear and headed for the Métro. Bought a ticket good for four days straightaway.

Decided to take the easy way out and headed for the Latin Quarter to look for hotels. Cluny-Sorbonne stop, Boul. St. Michel. Used the Paris section of the Frommer guide.

Almost settled on staying in this one place on the rue de Sommerard, which was cheaper at 115F, including breakfast, and has a staff that spoke quite good English. But the only rooms they had faced into the interior courtyard, and they didn’t take Visa and my traveller’s cheques are running obscenely low already.

So I ended up on the fifth floor of the Hôtel St. Michel on rue Cujas, where I am paying 170F largely for the view of the dome of the Sorbonne from the little balcony overlooking the street. And it does have a little bathroom with a shower and a toilet (no bidet) right in the room (though it smells a little; tolerable if I keep the door shut). It also has ghastly green and gold flowered wallpaper, reminding me yet again that Americans have no monopoly on bad taste.† And it has the inevitable ripple chenille bedspread. No way around those, here.

Afraid I didn’t get a heck of a lot done today. Spent the entire morning just being tired. Oh, I did eat the pastry I bought in Moissac, and the rest of the cheese from La Côte last Monday. And I made a list of places I wanted to see here and studied the Métro map for the correct stops. And finally I lugged myself out of the desk chair and took a shower and changed my clothes . . .

Over to the Musée d’Orsay after that. It really is as odd as it appeared in Progressive Architecture. All that 19th Century Beaux Arts statuary cluttering up the main hall.

Wasn’t there to see that, though . . . Wound my way through the pre-Impressionist and Realist paintings till I found the hall devoted to Courbet. And there, on a side wall, not at all well-lit, but what do you expect in this blessed country, there it was-- Courbet’s portrait of Hector. It was darker than I’d expected, but the eyes were still burning, stern but sad and very honest and frank. God! I could have loved him! I suppose I do love him, as much as one can love a man who died eighty-five years before one was born.

I have to visit his grave before I leave this town and I’m not really looking forward to it. As mad as it sounds, I don’t want to have to admit that he’s really gone, that there isn’t somewhere in this world where he still might be.

Oh folie!

There was nothing to do now but look at his portrait and try not to weep publicly, or at least conspicuously (too late to prevent the former, I’m afraid). And to apologise to him for not having my part in the Te Deum down better and to promise him to always perform his works better in the future.

Then I stepped back and watched the others who so heedlessly or negligently passed by . . . If I were Hector and that were a portrait of Gluck or Beethoven and I heard people make flippant remarks about it as two teenaged boys did, you can be sure I’d have something very decisive and to the point to say about it. But I lack Hector’s confidence.

Looked at some other things while I was there. I’m sorry I spent so much time on the early 19th Century folks and none on the Art Nouveau artists. The Museum closed early today (they were bringing in and mounting an exhibit in honor of Mozart) so there was just no time. But I did go see the Impressionists, the Renoirs, and the Monets and Cezannes and Van Goghs. Had to, even if they weren’t Important. I needed the sense of illumination after the murkiness of the paintings done earlier in the century.

Happily, the skies were trying to clear up a bit outside. But it was a bit surreal how it was doing it, the sun gold-edging the clouds and delicately washing the domes and rooftops and the girders of a nearby Ferris wheel.

5:00 PM and trying to get dark by then so I only went over to Notre Dame and noted the time for High Mass in the morning. There were people all over the church even at that time on a Saturday evening.

Headed back to the hotel, picking up a bit of dinner on the way. Got it at a large charcuterie where they sold all sorts of prepared food from attractively lit display cases. As I waited for my order to be wrapped I noticed that the case didn’t seem to be refrigerated, even though it was full of cooked fish and seafood dishes. Seemed weird to me, but I reminded myself that just because we Americans are into refrigeration and keeping everything bone-chillingly cold, that doesn’t mean everyone else in the world has to be. They can have their own customs if they want! They probably make everything fresh and sell it fast enough that it doesn’t matter.

Trying to walk back to the rue Cujas, I learned the hard way that the Galeries Lafayette map they gave me at the hotel wasn’t worth a poop-- leaves out half the streets. I got good and turned around and good and tired before I discovered, oh hell, I’d gone two Métro stops the wrong direction along the Boul. St. Germaine. So I got on the train and came back the easy, if not so scenic, way.

On the way from the Métro stop I did something I’d sworn the other day I wanted to do as soon as I had the opportunity-- I bought a copy of one of the London papers. Paid 9F for the Independent (don’t know what that says about me or my politics-- something ominous, I’m sure) and took it back to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening reading it and eating my coquille au saumon and my piece of triple-reinforced gateau de chocolat with the blade of my Swiss Army knife. Civilization.
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†They've done some serious redecorating since then, as you may see here. And some serious price increasing, too.

It Would Be Good For Me . . .

A couple posts ago I listed my Impossible Dreams for 2009. Such lovely habits! Such ideal accomplishments! How good it would be to incorporate them all into my life-- if only I were a wholly different sort of person born in a whole different universe.

But now, if I am to make one serious resolution for 2009, I see it would be good for me to resolve to stand against cowardice and fear and instead think and act in courage and fortitude.

Never mind all the specific things I do or refrain from doing out of fear. I'm sure if you examine your own heart you'll discover many of them for yourself, in yourself. But God helping, I resolve to stand against . . .

. . . the fear of disappointment.

. . . the fear of not being liked by other people.

. . . the fear of bothering other people.

. . . the fear of having to take the time and trouble to do something properly.

. . . the fear of not performing up to other people's expectations.

. . . the even greater fear of not performing up to my own expectations.

. . . the fear of making a choice in a given situation because it automatically eliminates my freedom to choose.

. . . the fear of loss of freedom.

. . . the fear of loss of autonomy.

. . . and all those other crabby, craven cowardices that seize me in the gut and whine, "I doan wanna. I'm not gonna. It scares me. Leave me alone!"

So what can I put up against this? How can I take heart and strength in the new year?

By means of perfect love.

John the Apostle in his first letter writes, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."

Whose perfect love is this? Mine? Don't be ridiculous. I can't love perfectly, any more than I can be perfectly brave, courageous, and bold.

No, John is referring to the perfect love of God. He says, "We love, because he first loved us." That perfect love is shown in Jesus Christ the Son of God as he willingly died to turn away the condemnation that I and every human being deserved for our rebellion against God. So since God loved me so much as to do that for me, and since there is now no condemnation for someone like me who belongs to Christ Jesus, what do I have on earth to be afraid of? Really, ultimately, God himself is the only one we really need to fear, and in Christ, he's taken that fear of punishment totally away!

This doesn't mean that when fear marks my first reaction to being asked to do something, I'll automatically tackle it or pick it up and run with it to prove how courageous and God-trusting I am. Maybe the best response in a given situation might be for me to decide that whatever it is isn't worth doing! But let me make that decision clearly and honorably out of logic and love, not as a by-product of my endocrine system! To conduct myself like that would be very good for me . . . and, most likely, very good for others as well.

The Easter Weekend from Hell: Prelude, Part 1

When I spent the 1988-89 academic year doing a time-warped Junior Year Abroad in Oxford, England, I and several other Americans in my program were lodgers at Coverdale* Theological College. We weren’t the only internationals there: Coverdale* played host to students from Africa, Asia, Canada, and Europe as well.

One of the Europeans was a man from Switzerland whom I’ll call Lukas Renzberger*. Lukas* was ordinarily a student at a Swiss Reformed seminary in Berne, and the fact that we were both from the Reformed tradition and outsiders compared to the Brits made it easy for us to hit it off. Lukas was about 27 at the time, a big, good-looking, well-set-up young man, and single. He would have been very easy for me to fancy, except that my affections were hopelessly, uselessly, but deservedly and thoroughly tied up with the Englishman I’m calling Nigel.*

Not being infatuated with Lukas* made college life with him all the more pleasant. We were friendly enough that it was a comfortable and relaxed thing for him to invite me to spend Christmas with his family in northern Switzerland, but not so close that the invitation and my acceptance carried any awkward implications.

I had a good time there with him and his family, up to mid-day on the 25th. Then, just before Christmas dinner, Lukas* and I got into a debate about the significance and meaning of Holy Communion. Only his father calling us to the table ended it, and after that, Lukas* seemed very distant, only speaking in Swiss German when we were all together, and turning off my attempts to start conversation when we were alone.

This bothered me. Did he think I was a heretic because I didn’t share his Zwinglian views? Maybe he thought I shouldn’t be holding forth on such topics at all! After all, he was the theological scholar and I was only an architect.

But when we both got back to Coverdale* in January, he seemed to be his old amiable self. Our friendship fell back into its usual easy course and I let what had happened in Switzerland go unmentioned.

Fast forward to late February that year, towards the end of Hilary Term. I was in Lukas’* room at college one Saturday afternoon and we were discussing our plans for the upcoming month-long Easter vacation.

"I’m joining some of the Coverdale* ordinands on the inner-city mission to Liverpool," he told me. "We’ll be serving there for a week. After that, for Holy Week I’ll be up at Iona. I’m on a programme at the Abbey with the Iona Community. Have you heard of Iona? It’s up on the west coast of Scotland."

"'Have I heard of Iona?'" I repeated. "Of course I have! I’m Presbyterian, aren’t I? At my church back home in the States, it’s practically a rule that if you get over to Scotland, you have to visit Iona. It's part of our heritage!

"In fact," I went on, "I’m planning on visiting Iona, too. Only, I don’t know exactly when I’ll be there; it depends on where else I want to go first. But maybe I’ll see you there!"

Lukas* agreed that that would be nice. And even if we couldn’t make contact during the vac, we made a date to go out to dinner when we both got back to Coverdale* the second week in April. My treat this time, I told him. I’d never yet had the chance to reciprocate his hospitality in Switzerland.

All very frank, friendly, and free. You will see anon how things actually fell out between us on St. Columba's holy isle.

"The Children's Bread"?

My eyes are closing sideways and my head is dropping into the keyboard, but I thought I'd better update Whomever Might Be Out There with how my dog Magdalen is doing.

Yes, she is still in the land of the living. But it's been up and down since Friday afternoon, with overnights at the local vet's and a stay at the emergency clinic and a blood transfusion and a test for a possible tick-related auto-immune illness (results not back yet) and who knows what all. I visited her at the vet's this afternoon and she's more cheerful, but her nose is still oozing blood and her red cell count is still too low.

Tomorrow we're doing what I thought the other day was beyond possibility: I'm taking her over to the big specialty vet clinic over in Ohio to get the test to see if she really has a tumor or what. I'm not sure which would be worse: a ruptured tumor or an "or what." But after six days of this, I just want to know.

I wonder if I'm turning into one of those neurotic types who lavish on their pets the affection they would've/could've/should've devoted to their children, had they ever had any. But I've never had any and Maddie depends on me, and so I'll do what I can for her.

And if-- no, let's say when she recovers, maybe I should teach her some fancy tricks and she can earn enough to keep us all out of bankruptcy.