Thursday, January 29, 2009

Prometheus (sort of) Unbound

Better today. No chills, no fever, no pain.

It's time to discard bitter cold, deep snow and harsh wind for a few moments. Maybe, instead, a thought about summer would be good for today. Maybe a thought about beauty and timelessness and what truly is important.

The Legend of Mont St. Michel by Guy de Maupassant

"I had first seen it from Cancale, this fairy castle in the sea. I got an indistinct impression of it as of a gray shadow outlined against the misty sky. I saw it again from Avranches at sunset. The immense stretch of sand was red, the horizon was red, the whole boundless bay was red. The rocky castle rising out there in the distance like a weird, seignorial residence, like a dream palace, strange and beautiful-this alone remained black in the crimson light of the dying day."

Natural landscape, architecture and religion seem to blend into one. The island city, Benedictine Abbey and steepled church in Normandy, France, is spectacular, beautiful, historic and a whole bunch of other adjectives, but I do not know that I would want to live there.


Follow the road to Monet. The area around Giverny in northern France has to be among the most beautiful regions in Europe. Claude Monet, an impressionist painter, lived there once upon a time. Looking at a pair of photos of his garden is a reminder that soon it will be warm and sunny summer again. (Photos are Fram's, summer 2004)

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