La petite fille pleurant
23-II.2008
On the occasion of my sophomore year room-mate's trek out to Paris, I had the opportunity to re-live vicariously on the streets of the city, for a few moments. Searching for images of La nature se dévoilant devant la science, one of my favorite statures in the Musée d'Orsay, I also came upon Bartholomé's exquisitely expressive Petite fille pleurant. A little girl is lying naked on a rock of some sort, in the fetal position, covering her face, and sobbing silently. You can almost see the statue shake with her tears.
I remember one time at the museum; I had finished admiring the work, and a little boy and his mother stopped by it for a moment, before shuffling down the stairs behind me. "But Mommy, why was she crying?" asked the boy.
The mother saw room for a lesson. "Oh, who knows," she pined, "maybe she had been very bad-- maybe she didn't do her homework or maybe she lied to her parents." Gaaahhhhh!!! Look at the statue. Did she "forget to do her homework?" Some parents have no shame.
By the Liffey
9-XII.2007
My grandmother and my grandfather moved into a retirement community in Madison about two years ago. They have their own house, but they walk down to the community center most mornings for an easy, cheap breakfast. Somehow, I can't shake from my head the image of the two of them, in their old age, and alongside so many others of their generation, walking down to breakfast together, with tired joints and heavy memories. Except that my grandmother no longer remembers how to walk, let alone her memories. I went to Wisconsin during my sophomore year to see them; at that point, her Alzheimer's had gotten bad enough that she scarcely remembered me. She was still polite and careful-- the disease had torn away her memories, but her impeccable Southern manners were intact. Their memories, our living history, disappear behind us like the edges of a magnifying glass running over the OED. We grow and recede within the pages, within the volumes; surge for a moment and disappear again into the tome.
I imagined myself in old age, walking along the River Liffey with my souvenirs; an entire life that I hope will be complete and satisfying. I will walk by the river in my memories, or perhaps without thinking of them. And children and young people, and parents will all pass by, surging forth in their turn-- weaving, flowing, fighting to glimpse beyond our time, and then fading back into the quiet continuity. And then, my time will disappear.
Cîteaux-Pruniers
9-XII.2007
After a week in Cîteaux, I think it's fair to make a couple of comparisons with my last retreat in a monastery, at the Vietnamese Buddhist 'Village des Pruniers' (Plum Village), just north of Bordeaux. Despite both of their ages, the actual buildings are quite new in each site; the Buddhists came to France with their leader, Thich Nhat Hahn (spic?) in the sixties to escape the war. Everything is new, and as one of the most important sites for this strain of Buddhism (largely by Hahn's presence), constantly under construction. The Cistercians have a claim to their site, just south of Dijon, dating to 1098 when St Robert first led the construction of a church here. But the monastery was destroyed and the Monks were chased off during the French revolution-- they would return a hundred years later-- so the current church dates to only 1998 (the '900th anniversary'), and the guest house is even newer (and I should say, significantly more comfortable than the Village des Pruniers).
I guess the first thing driving me to make the comparison is the quality of the food. I THOUGHT the food looked alright here at Cîteaux, but ufff. No. Not so good. Where the Buddhists had simple, amazing food at every meal, the Cistercians have seriously dropped the ball. The food is like terrible diner food, significantly worse than the food at Oxford or Swarthmore. There is wine at lunch and dinner, but only those with terrible (or non-existent) taste would drink it; even alcoholics would probably abhor it, so badly is it oxidized. And then there's the question of silence. Both orders insist on it, but for the Catholics, this seems to mean "gesture vehemently when you want something; if you can't get the person's attention, whisper somewhat quietly, and make sure to say thank you whenever anyone does something for you. Aside from that, don't talk unless you think of something that either can't wait till after dinner and is mildly important, or if you think you might forget it, or of course, if it's clever, and you have to say it in the moment. Other than that, try to keep talking to a strict minimum."
It's also interesting the way that people seem to "vivre leur foi" in the two communities. The catholics go to the rites as though it was a kind of painful penitence for past sins, while the buddhists-- in a less-regimented ethos (though that doesn't apply as much to the monks)-- happily went to the temple to meditate at totally random times, for the pleasure. The sense of community was also stronger among the Buddhists. The retreaters had much more initiative in pursuing their faith and practice in Bordeaux; here it's just, 'please go to service (i.e., go to church and sit and stand and sit and stand for an hour) several times a day.' For the lay people, there is hardly any interaction.
Despite my interest in the monastic way of life, I'm not super religious, so weird rites make me really uncomfortable. I've said on numerous occasions that I did't like one of the Buddhist practices of throwing yourself down on the ground and letting all of the horribleness of your parents flow out of you. But just for comparison check this out: the Cistercians eat their God! They all line up and eat these chips, and take a shot of alcohol, and they're totally convinced that it's Jesus! It's cannibalistic! It's totally insane!
Over all, I was personally much more comfortable with the Buddhists. The Cistercians have been nice enough, and it's a pretty area (though it doesn't compare to the scenery of Plum Village), but over all, mezzo mezzo.
Runner's Toe
8-XII.2007
I took a walk this morning in the wooded area, inside the grounds of the monastery. I watched my feet as I walked, and I came to think of a spring afternoon when I was in 3rd grade. I was playing in the street behind my house, running, chasing, soccer-ing, and scootering as a kid will. At one point, one of the cool kids-- then in 6th grade-- told us about runner's toes, where the second toe is longer than the stubby thumb-toe. We all set to comparing our feet, and I proudly displayed my two excellent specimens, for all to see.
It was funny to remmember that afternoon-- unexceptional by any measure, yet defining nonetheless, in that it has stayed with me for more than ten years. The kids who grew up there have all scattered now. Two of them went to Vassar together; I am in France while another just returned home from Nepal; the 'cool sixth-grader' is a kindergarten teacher in Providence. We scattered, yet we are all tied by a spider's web of unexceptional moments under the fading afternoon sun.
Electrical Lines
6-XII.2007
I've often thought that photographers for electrical companies must have the easiest job in the world. Power lines slice brashly, rudely across stunning landscapes, unaware of their surroundings. The best view in Paris is from Montparnasse.
L'Abbaye de Cîteaux
5-XII.2007
I awoke as the train pulled into Dijon, unsure if it was my station. My throat throbbed and I battled with a sticky yellow mucous that had sealed my eyes shut in my sleep. Making little progress, I gave up on vision and desperately popped one of the lozenges that the pharmacist in Paris had promised to be "pretty strong," but turned out to be little more than menthol infused with some painkiller less potent than codeine, which is what I had hoped for. I stumbled out of the train, made my way out into the station, and trundled along to the bus terminal where I waited for the number 43 to Seurre that initially appeared empty aside from a single other passenger, and filled only slightly as we left the city... if you could really count Dijon as such. No offense to the mustard or to the academy.
The bus fled the ramparts of civilization, hurtling along divided one-lane roads. Sleep embraced me again, and when I awoke, I asked some of the few remaining passengers if they could point out when we reached the abbey, but they all shook their heads-- it was after them. Before long, I found myself alone in the bus, save the driver; more than weary of missing my stop in the middle of nowhere, I determined to retain consciousness and was rewarded when the bus finally screeched to a halt by a large arrow indicating "L'Abbaye de Cîteaux." The driver pointed across a field to a couple of lights. "Over there," he said, "have a good stay." Before I could turn to thank him, the bus swang away, leaving me coughing and cold beneath the stars.
The Cistercian order was founded here more than 900 years ago by Saint Robert. Not long thereafter, Bernard of Clairvaux took his vows in this community before crisscrossing Europe, annointing an antipope pushing another to abdicate, fervently prosecuting Abelard, and forever leaving monasteries in his wake, and for several hundred years, the Abbey of Cîteaux was one of the most important centers of Catholicism in France. But the French revolution saw the desctruction of the abbey, the monks chased away, and the buildings dismantled and sold as stone. New monks returned to this site a hundred years later and picked up where their predecessors had left off-- with a simple farm, a renowned cheese, and six services each day, starting at 4:15 in the morning, with Vigil.
I looked around for clues of my surroundings, but darkness enveloped me; I made my way towards the light, dragging my suitcase across an empty gravel parking lot, and through an old gate. In a large, off-white building, a black hood bobbed to and fro by the front window. When I entered, the old monk pulled back his hood and peered up at me from his desk. He had a head like a boulder and a nose like Gérard Dépardieu, with a little crease at the tip. His white hair still grew thick on his scalp, but it was buzzed close to the root. I found myself inarticulate in his dominion; the monks' long silence demands to be respected, and I wasn't sure what to say. "Good evening," I murmured, "I just arrived on the bus."
"It's late, isn't it?" He looked at his list, "Mr. Saxon."
"Well... I don't know. I'm the only one, though."
"No children?" He looked up at me for a moment.
"Well, there were a few before... I was the only one who got off here."
"Ah, yes. I'm not surprized. Cela ne m'étonne du tout, du tout." He stared blankly at the counter for a moment, picked up the phone to his left, sighed, and clumsily replaced it on the receiver. He looked down. I didn't know if I had forgotten something, or if I should remind him I was still there, but after a moment he picked up the phone again and dialed. "Yes, he's here." He hung up again, "Brother Bernard is coming." We spoke for a moment, until Brother Bernard swept up the stairs, and welcomed me to the abbey.
"This is the dining room. Dinner is at 6:45, in silence, but we play music. At lunch time, there is a direct feed from the monks' dining room, and a reading. Breakfast is between 5am and 9:15. You are in room..." he looked at my key, "213. This is your napkin. After meals, everyone washes up. You'll pick up the rhythm."
"This is great," I smiled. The food on the table looked far better-- simpler, but better-- than the grub at Teddy Hall. "Sooo much better than school. It's good to get away."
"Yes... when you wrote me, you were in England?"
"Yeah, I'm at Oxford this year, but I'm actually from Philadelphia."
"Philadelphia?"
"In the states."
"Hmmm." He shook his head, "we don't get many Americans here." I tried to give him a justification for my status as the one retreater under the age of fifty, or from a radius of more than 100 miles, but failed.