Scapes....

Pictures from an Exhibitionist

I love travel....  And so does Amanda.  Only yesterday she went to Harlow, taking the wrong bus from St Albans and then resolutely refusing to get off it.

No matter. With the help of several vehicles full of the boys in blue from Welwyn Garden City, a sat nav and a Chinese tracking device (thank you Huawei!) we were reunited and spent an hour or so exploring the delights of Essex and Eastern Hertfordshire (never thought that Bishops Stortford was where Bishops used to ford the river Stort, whose soggy flood plain reaches Harlow, about whom I only knew Jean....)

Anyway, I digress (as I am won't to do....)

I love travelling, and seeing.....  [And, having recently been told that I have the beginnings of both cataracts and macular degeneration, I appreciate the wonders of sight with particular acuity.....]

So, from my room with a view on Hoog Straat (Rue Haute), Les Marolles, Brussels....

I contemplate the attractions of Benelux....

And they are many, from the Maison du Roi (1870) in the Grand Place, Brussels....

Through the Galleries Royales Saint-Hubert (1847)....

To the sweeping arches of the Liège-Guillemins train station (Santiago Calatrava, 2009),

To the cobbles and vaults around the Basilica of Saint Servatius (11th century) by the Vrijthof at the heart of Maastricht (whatever happened to the EU?)

Another train ride whisks me over the soggy plains of Flanders, flashing past the cities of Ghent, (what?)

and Bruges, (where?)

To the sand sea and sky of Ostend, where I look out across the Southern Bight of the North Sea, towards Eastern Anglia, as was.....

And see nothing.....

Or is it just me?  Is there no one there?

Il y a deux sortes de temps

Y a le temps qui attend

Et le temps qui espère

Il y a deux sortes de gens

Il y a les vivants

Et moi je suis en mer.

There are two sorts of time:

there is the time that waits

and the time that hopes.

There are two sorts of people:

there are the living

and me, I am at sea.

l'Ostendaise - Ostend girl

Jacques Brel

Yes, I love travel; going places, coming back, seeing things, meeting people.....  

Long may it last.....

{NB Composed before Belgium shut down bars and restaurants, etc.....

O tempora!  O mores!}

Sexual Healing....

Pas de Masques....

Baby, I got sick this mornin'

A sea was stormin' inside of me

Baby, I think I'm capsizin'

The waves are risin' and risin'

We have much to lament, I guess, but also much for which we should be grateful....

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

Revelations 9:20

The time is out of joint..... 

In Ostend, I dance to the music of time at Anglo-Belgian painter James Ensor (and the his friends of the Cercle Cœcilia)'s masquerade the Bal du Rat Mort, which was initiated in 1898 after cheesy trips to Montmartre....

James Ensor: Masks Watching a Turtle, 1894

Ensor had a thing about masks, but, as above, is it the mask, or the person wearing it, that does the watching?  In Brussels, for a moment, I think Dumbnik Kummins is watching over me, swinging high on a wall (if only).....  His wooden face devoid of humanity, maybe full of opiates.

Though the pharmacies here are out of masks, the atmosphere in the Place du Jeu de Bal, in Les Marolles, is more laid back, and plenty of carved wooden masks are available, though this vendor is having a zizz (that's no way to make a living)   

There are people all around.  Some ignore me, pointedly, their fashionable stances ensuring medical metres between us....

Others keep a discreet distance, while they imagine their memoirs, 

While still others immerse themselves in accounts of others.....

And others simply have to talk to others, ignoring my innocent fellowship.....

The streets are full of intrigue, with pretence and suspicion rife....

Indeed, some do make me feel a tad guilty, for stealing their souls....

Some make a show of ignoring my shadow....

While others seem to wonder what I see in their quizzical gazes,

Or gently sympathise with my idle clicking....

The thing is my face is masked, and we are not understanding each other, even though my heart wants to reach out......

Who builds these walls?

Where's the fun gone?

Back in Ostend, at Residence Jane, Number 77 Promenade Albert I, Marvin Gaye sits at his table, composing Sexual Healing.

Ah, maybe I am wrong.....  he did that in 1982.  

A couple of doors down, at the Taverne Floride, I drink Leffe, as he did, and think that in this time of pandemic, maybe his formula wasn't wrong.....

Though sadly it didn't stop his preacher father shooting him.  Twice.  Once in the heart and once in the shoulder.

No wonder the angels are crying....

And the windows are full of masked ghosts....

Pas de masques.....

Please

And when I get that feeling

I want sexual healing

Sexual healing is good for me

Makes me feel so fine, it's such a rush

Helps to relieve the mind, and it's good for us

Sexual Healing

David Ritz / Marvin Gaye / Odell Brown

James Ensor: Death and the Masks, 1867

What's Going On?

Shelter from the storm

But it's raining.  Raining in my heart....

Storm Ciara.  Storm Dennis.  Storm Jorge.  Storm Covid..... Storm Boris..... Storm Cummings.... Stormy Mondays.  It's a hell of a time to be alive.  It would have been so much simpler in the Good Old Days, when, for example, the walls of the White Castle, Castell Gwyn (not the novel by Orhan Pamuk), some seven miles from Abergavenny, in Monmouthshire, were gleaming white..... 

I am here to shelter from the storms, though it still rains in my heart.....  The landscape is sodden, the clouds are heavy and grainy.  It's hard to find a ray of light....

There's a nearby cottage.  It seems to welcome me, but....

Everything up to that point had been left unresolved....

[I] Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm....

"Come in," [I would love her to say]

"I'll give ya shelter from the storm...."

There's not a soul around.  The landscape is godforsaken.  The Skirrid (Ysgyryd Fawr) eerily glistens at me from under the purple rain.....

Wild trees shriek at me, like harpies in the gale....

The road stretches out, shining under a  burnished pewter sky.  But, it's the road to nowhere....

I could seek refuge, crying, in a chapel, but  its doors are locked, as are mine....  

So, damp, and cold, and strangely alone, I  turn and cross the bridge over the troubled waters of the Severn while I can.....

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line

Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine

If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born

Come in, she said

I'll give ya shelter from the storm

Bob Dylan

Shelter from the Storm

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

I could have been someone....

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Through this weary world of woe

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

No one on earth would ever know

If I'd had the time

My garden would shine with roses

My house would freshly sparkle

My books would be read

I might have been content

If I'd had the time

I would be fluent in every tongue

Well almost every (at least some)

I would remember jokes, and history,

You could ask me anything

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes.

If I'd had the time

It would not have been squandered

I would have studied, practised,

I could have been good at things

I might have got beyond Prelude IX

If I'd had the time

I'd have been better

As a friend, a father and a lover

I might even have earned respect

Perhaps people might have listened

Time would have been my friend, my brother,

Entwined in loved embracing

The days passing without regrets

Like migrating fieldfare, 

Ever to return

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes

But, I did have the time

But I used it all up

Well, almost all of it,

Now I just ask for a little more,

Where did it go?

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song.

So, it goes.

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road, around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback at the world's end

Bob Dylan

Ain't Talkin'

With thanks to Jem Finer and Shame MacGowan