Paris in the meantime

A Free Man in Paris

There is something strange about the reconstruction of Notre Dame.....  Perhaps it is because it represents the phoenix-like resurrection of a dream.  Paris has been a part of my world for over fifty years - only a small part, but with comings and goings and this and that, from Absinthe to Maryland, from Cluny to Joyce. But now, as the cranes tower over the burned-out corpse of Our Lady, and passers-by take selfies, I lapse into reveries of times past and retrace the cinders of my life.

This picture graces the sous-terre of Bofinger Brasserie on rue de la Bastille, and I wondered what the lady was implying with her book....  On the internet I found that someone else had asked the question:

Que signifie : quo non hac duce?

 To which this was the reply:

Bonjour, 

« quo non hac duce » pourrait être traduit par « Jusqu’où ne va-t-on pas sous sa conduite» [How far do we not go under his guidance? ] which is to be found on the reverse of coins from the reign of Napoléon III.

NB [François Houtin, jardinier-paysagiste, réalise un rêve d’artiste et met au service de la gravure sa maîtrise de l’art topiaire en réalisant cette composition paysagée de la place de la Bourse, siège de la Chambre de commerce. Palmiers, ifs et cyprès, bassins et jets d’eau ornés de coquilles et dauphins, donnent à cet espace emblématique de la ville un luxe versaillais, digne de son appellation d’origine, la place Royale. Au XVIIIe siècle, une médaille de la chambre de commerce de Bordeaux portait l’inscription Quo non hac duce (Jusqu’où ne va-t-on pas sous sa conduite ?), remplacée sur la gravure par florente, faisant référence à la floraison et la prospérité.]

Qui savait?  And what, pray, does this have to do with my freedom?

Well, in the meanwhile, upstairs chez Bofinger there is la coupole (not, just now, to be confused with the restaurant in Montparnasse made famous by Josephine Baker (and, incidentally, my mother's godmother, though that's another story....):

And while my ROGNONS DE VEAU FLAMBÉS AU COGNAC (sauce au poivre vert, fricassée de champignons, purée de pommes de terre au beurre) are prepared:

Lady Gaga (whose privacy I respect, but who does not recognise me.....) enjoys PÂTÉ EN CROÛTE MAISON at la table à côté de moi:

Hey Ho!  It's a mad mad mad mad world, full of celebrities or simulacra.  At Bouillon Chartier in Montmartre I once ate close to Samuel Beckett - (but he did not recognise me).  Now I find myself seated with three pretty maids from North Carolina - Rosa:

Caroline:

And Lily:

Yes, the world is full of wonderful people:  some, comme cet homme, who could have been in the same chair on the left bank when I first took pictures here:

Others, like this combination of Monsieur Hulot and Magritte, seem to be artistic creations from a somehow better age:

In Le Jardin du Luxembourg two friends rehearse the news of the day:

While others remind themselves of the way to go:

Sunshine is le mot du jour.  One takes simple pleasure in the fresh air:

While another stocks up on vitamin D:

Within The Musée du Luxembourg they are asking, Who was Gertrude Stein? in an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso. And here she is, as pictured by Cecil Beaton, with, and without, her overcoat.....

Though despite her manteau, there is sunshine here too, and, in the background, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century by Andy Warhol, to remind us that the sun shines equally on all of us:

Yes, the world is full of interesting, different people, and their enigmatic shadows:

I am particularly pleased to meet this girl, who Picasso called Buste (étude pour Les Demoiselles d'Avignon).  It seems that she is gentle, and I think she might make a demure companion for a free man in Paris:

In the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre I find myself touched by the space, enveloped, perhaps, by a sense of peace. I know that Amanda would love this, but she cannot be with me, and, though my thoughts fly up, my words remain below [sic].....

Outside there are crowds - (but they don't recognise me either).  I am a free man in Paris....

Free to drink Ricard at a pavement cafe:

Free to draw on a Gauloise (Disque Bleu) in the street at dusk:

And free to take a selfie by the Seine, with the charred skeleton of Louis Vierne's organ en arrière-plan.....

I was a free man in Paris

I felt unfettered and alive

Nobody was calling me up for favors

No one's future to decide

Joni Mitchell

A Free man in Paris

Place de la République, Paris. 

Marianne, the young and fictional woman who represents the republic, wears her Phrygian cap, the symbol of Liberty.....

Across the great divide

Milan to Zurich.....

Across the great divide,

Just grab your hat, and make that ride.....

The Band

Know what?  If I had to choose (forgive me  this irrelevance).....  If I had to choose between the Duomo di Milano and a Howlin' Wolf concert.  It would be hard....  

But the Wolf is gone.....  (He was wonderful - I saw him in Lancaster in about 1971.....)

But Milan Cathedral is washed in the light of the dying sun and, if you throw in an aperitif in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, as the planet tips toward night, maybe I might veer towards the urban.

Milan is frightfully trendy.  All the young men wear sharp blue suits, open neck shirts and shiny shoes with no socks.  The women wobble on extremely high heels, are draped in shapely dresses or short skirts and flimsy tops, all upstaged by gold chains and designer purses.  And everybody seems to be drinking flutes of Prosecco.....

I quaff a large Campari (the wrong drink for Milan), find myself a place to eat risotto alla Milanese and osso buco, then retire to my shabby fourth floor hotel.

The night is then shattered by a violent thunderstorm, but in the fresh morning I breakfast on a spremuta, a cappuccino and a cornetto alla crema in the Mercato Centrale, under the edges of Milano Centrale, the largest railway station in Europe.

Two and a half hours later, after a ride along the shores of Lake Como, I arrive in Tirano, where tagliatelle con ragu di cervo and verdura alla griglia with Valtellina wine at the Trattoria Gagin revive me.  

It's a fine little town at 429 metres above sea level in the foothills of the Alps. Friendly and unpretentious, surrounded by mountains, but seriously historical, I look down towards the south from my terrace:

And up towards the north:

I then take refuge, after an aperitif with Rinata, in the Vineria di Andreotta Filippo, where calice of superb wines are accompanied by plates of tasty nibbles sufficient to pass for supper.....

In the morning I board the Bernina Express at 08.06 and set off for the Bernina Pass at 2,253 metres. 

This railway, completed in 1920, links Italy with Switzerland and forms a part of the 384 kilometre narrow gauge Rhaetian Railway network.  Not far out of Tirano we circle the Brusio Viaduct, returning over our tracks in a stunning trick to beat the altitude.

Although this journey might perhaps be enhanced by the snows of winter, the scenery is spectacular (even if on this particular day the light isn't great).  Looking back down at the Lago di Poschiavo I wave farewell (for the time being) to Italy, and we zig and zag on further up the mountains.

At Alp Grüm, at 2091 metres, we stop for twenty minutes while the crew take coffee in the bar, and we admire the scenery, looking up towards the Vadret da Palü glacier, here obscured by clouds (and perhaps shrinking as we stand and stare....)

The highest point is Ospizio Bernina, at 2,253 metres. This is Lago Bianco, and here the language changes from Italian to Engadin Romansch and German and the waters now drain towards the Danube and the Black Sea as we begin to slip down to the north.

At Morteratsch we can appreciate what a glacier really looks like, grinding down the mountain, still enormously powerful even in its dying throes....

And then it really is all downhill.  Not that it is unattractive, but it is a bit of an anticlimax.  I change trains at Chur, taking a table in the restaurant car of the DB express to Zurich, treating myself to lentil and sausage soup and a bottle of Helles as we cruise alongside the lake.  It is a sunny Sunday, and the shores are busy with Swiss citizens doing absolutely nothing....

The city, the largest in Switzerland, straddles the Limmat, and is lively, with the cobbled streets of the old town busy with both Swiss and tourists doing nothing.... I take a beer in the Zeughauskeller, where some kind of heavy machine gun sits atop the main entrance.

Then, a little later, I manage to get a table in Zum Kropf, an ornately decorated restaurant/beer hall dating back to the fifteenth century. An Augustiner K'Salat, a couple of Ambers and an Apfelkuchli and it's nearly time for bed.....

She's gone, but I don't worry:

I'm sitting on top of the world.

Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon

(as sung by)

Chester Burnett

aka Howlin Wolf

The Magic Mountain

To step lightly, lightly....

Fresh from an early morning dip in the clear calm sea at Viareggio, my cousin whisks me up to her home above Camaiore, where Henry Moore once lived.

This is Tuscany, under the Apuan Alps, from where sculptors have extracted their stones for ever......

And this is Tuscany, a large region of central Italy which ranges from the Tyrrhenian sea to the heights of the Apennines, from the riches of Florence to humble villages where the light of life is slowly dying as traditions fade and incomers invade.

This is rural Italy, where the house and garden merge quietly into the steep wooded slopes of surrounding hills. Outhouses serve as workshops,

Where an artist may work undisturbed,

Or as storerooms to hold the fuel for winter warmth.

A little way uphill there are the remains of the Castello di Montecastrese, a 12th century castle that was used to monitor traffic from and to Lucca on the Via Francigena.

The hills are dotted with tiny villages and isolated smallholdings, indicative both of the resilience of the local people and of some deep-rooted love of the natural environment.

The nearby town of Pietrasanta was frequented by Michelangelo in his search for the finest marbles (and where, allegedly, he assisted in the construction of the staircase within the Campanile).  It is a town that is still dusty with the chippings from creative artists, and which, this summer, hosted a show by Jake and Dinos Chapman (The Blind Leading the Dead) [though I am not going to say you absolutely need to make the trip.....]

It's a three hour drive, or so, to the top of Monte Amiata (1,738 m or 5,702 ft) but I am still in Tuscany, a central Italian region covering 23,000 square kilometres (8,900 square miles.). Its summit is crowned with a 22m iron cross, first raised in 1900 at the behest of Pope Leo XIII to celebrate the Anno Santo. It was seriously damaged by the Germans in retreat in 1944, but rebuilt in three months by local people in 1946.

Looking south from the top you can see Lake Bolsena (20 kms away) and just make out the hills around Lake Vico beyond which is not far from where we used to live.  On a clear day you can (I know; I have;) see the Dalmatian coast of Croatia to the east and Corsica to the west.

Close to the cross there is another monument. The Madonna degli Scout, a marble statue inaugurated in 1961, and frequently adorned with neckerchiefs and woggles....

The slopes of this sleeping giant are clothed in dense woods - beech trees up high and then chestnuts and pines lower down.  

And at about 600m above sea level there are olives, and vines, where my 90-year-old friend Corrado used to farm, but where now his 50-year-old son, Giacomo, harrows the ground around his olives,  to control the grass and allow rainwater to seep into the earth rather than run off.

It is over fifty years since my friends bought the remote farmhouse that Corrado was born in, and forty-seven since I first visited. It is a beautiful and tranquil place, nicely evoked by Eugenio Montale (1896 - 1981) in his poem Notizie dall’Amiata (News from Amiata)

There’s woodworm in the beams

and an odour of melon oozes

from the floor. The soft

smoke that ascends the valley

of elves and mushrooms to the transparent cone

of the summit fogs the windows,

and I write to you from here, from this table,

from this honeyed cell

of a sphere hurled through space....

It is barely touched by the modern world, though every year there are more twinkling lights in the view to the west after sunset.  

It is a place to relax in the shade of a walnut tree with a book, or to walk the stony tracks amongst the field maples,

And the oaks,

And then, as the sun begins to slip away behind distant hills it will be time for a glass of local red wine, and perhaps something to eat, such as grilled fegatelli on an open fire, or Tuscan bread and sharp pecorino cheese.....

Many men

Have searched all over Tuscany and never found

What I found there, the heart of the light

Itself shelled and leaved, balancing

On filaments themselves falling.

The secret

Of this journey is to let the wind

Blow its dust all over your body,

To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly

All the way through your ruins, and not to lose

Any sleep over the dead, who surely

Will bury their own, don't worry.

The Journey

by Rabindranath Tagore