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Karen Mickleson | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Joy In Beauty Travelogue: One Response to a Terminal Cancer Diagnosis | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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The couple who runs this place feel like old friends and make life like a funny English sitcom. Mary teaches painting, but my participation got askew the first week as I was wrapped up in leftovers of the robbery and getting the car repaired and trying to figure out what I can do with my niece in northern Spain for a week when she gets here the 16th of June. (I'd not realized it's next to impossible to "do" Barcelona on notice shorter than about a year.) Alan is remodeling a stone cottage so they can rent it, and between the two of them, there's always something amusing going on.
This place is right on the Dordogne river, only a few miles from Sarlat, Domme, and many other prize towns of this region.
One night the phone rings and Alan says it's someone from Vienna for me. Huh? A man identifies himself as some law enforcement bureaucrat in their version of the DEA in a tight, Viennese accented English and proceeds to explain to me that they'd intercepted my box of hundreds of little ziplock bags of Chinese herbs so they could do drug tests on them.
Seems that because the name of the friend whose home I sent the box to was Morrissette, they figured she might be related to Alanis Morrissette, who because she's a rock star, must have drug using relatives. And would I like him to send the box to me now? Sigh. At that point, given the complexities of my schedule, I declined his offer. When I called my friends, I found to my dismay that the cops had been to their house two or three times, apparently unwilling to believe they were no relation to Alanis Morrissette. I felt terrible. So much for mailing pills overseas!
While updating this travelogue in 2013, I see that Mary and Alan no longer own Montillou, and apparently whomever they sold it to apparently no longer operates it. Sad.
Manoir du Soubeyrac, Monflanquin, Lot
Greetings from my very own medieval stone cottage in the Lot!
I arrived at Manoir du Soubeyrac Saturday evening, a lovely place in the Lot countryside, surrounded by the songs of nightingales. On arrival, I discovered that my host, Claude, who speaks only French, insists that I am to make NO phone calls from the phone here in the house, but could only RECEIVE them.
I discovered, however, that I AM able to get online with my toll-free AOL France number, so I don't feel quite so isolated as I was going to without option to call anyone or send or receive any email. I'm not going to try and explain it to him, as he's an anxious, tho very sweet and decoratively flamboyant gay fellow who's got his mind set that outgoing calls are trouble. But I am pleased to be able to download and respond to email. I was feeling a little lonely.
I just came here from a wonderful B&B in the Dordogne run by an English couple who felt like old friends. My painting "course" w/Mary got askew the first week as I was wrapped up in fallout from the Antibes robbery & trying to figure out what I can do with my niece in northern Spain for a week when she gets here the 16th. I'd not realized it's impossible to "do" Barcelona on notice shorter than about a year, that getting lodging there is hell, etc, and my sister already planned her flight home on the 30th departing from Barcelona. They apparently don't have the plethora of gites & B&B's there which France does, enabling one to "wing" it. So, we'll see. Anyhow, I did get some initial instruction and participated some in the classes, and, now here, am beginning to paint--water colors, as that's only sensible when traveling.
I started my first watercolor since arriving here, today, which was a study--overly studied for my taste--cluster of tomatoes on the window sill looking out of my lavender French Blue windows to the grassy field and main house beyond.
This little cottage is so charming...I've been seeing medieval stone villages and houses now for weeks and weeks, and have finally landed in my own. Like I said, Claude's decor is a bit much--I thought I was the queen of floral cabbage rose prints, but his take the cake, far surpassing mine. And, he uses them on the stone walls in swag tie-back drapes on long dark wooden rods to soften the stone, presumably. Dear lace curtains with birds on the kitchen windows, little dried flowers and massive silk flower arrangements here and there, lots of old looking art on the wall, and stone crannies and nooks with interesting pots, pitchers and the like. Karen Brown would approve. Overall, it's a sweet find.
I'm disappointed, however, with the weather. My first and only naked swim in my amazingly beautiful and private swimming pool with a tremendous view of the purple Perigord happened on my arrival Saturday night, when it had been a godsend on a hot day. Yesterday, Sunday, I was down with a terrible headache all day and night and stuck with no Excedrin equivalent, and the whole day was overcast with interspersed rain. One cannot simply buy such things at the grocery store here as at home--only at a pharmacy. You get a measly 30 tablets for about $5. And, the pharmacy is closed on Sundays. Today I also woke to heavy rain, and it stayed cloudy most of the day.
Physically, I was commiserating with my friend who wrote about her aching body from gardening that my lower back is developing chronic discomfort when I move at night in bed; I have a searing tendonitis in my upper right arm-shoulder from the computer probably, and there are times when I fear my esophagus is not feeling right. But, to rush in to get an endoscopy wouldn't necessarily make sense, as what would it tell me? If the cancer's back, I'm a goner anyway, so why not just let go and enjoy myself.
The medications I had my friend Joy send never arrived, so I imagine they met the same fate as the books and supplements I'd sent to Vienna--ie: landing in a customs office, stuck there for the crime of non-declaration. I did find a gastroenterologist to get the equivalent here of Prilosec to the tune of about $300 a month. Pricey, but available.
2006 Addendum: My best friend from high school, Melissa, came to join me here, soon followed by her hunk of a husband and their daughter. Soon thereafter came my 18 year old niece, Megan. Melissa and I took some wonderful country road drives through the Lot, stopping for many photos along the way.
One day Melissa and I came upon this woman working in her garden
In our fractured high school French, we asked her if she would mind if we took her picture. She said something I didn't immediately understand, but was happy to sit down on her green bench where we took the shot. When we got back into the car after profuse "Beau jardin" and "Merci, madame" exclamations, I asked Melissa if she got what the woman had said she told me the woman said "If you take my picture, you take a piece of my heart with you". We sat in silence for quite awhile, half teary.
I've begun to have sensations in my esophagus for the past few weeks, and although it probably only means a build up of scar tissue, I've decided to bag going to Spain, and instead head north in France earlier than expected, to go to Lyon for an endoscopy/dilation. It's better to know what's going on than to worry. Meg will come with me, and then join her folks in southern France; and will go to Barcelona by herself for a few days before she flies home.
We went out into the village yesterday, and I had my second Beardie encounter of the trip--went bonkers over Humphrey, a beautiful "blue" Beardie boy, with an English couple in a street cafe. They live in Germany and tell of having had a previous Beardie who died at 5 years, when they got Humphrey. He was a doll, and I was totally absorbed in fuzz-butt hugs. Megan said after, "Auntie Karen, you needed that!".
The Beardie thing is something only those of us who adore these dogs can get. It's something about what, in the psychological world, is called, stupidly, affect hunger. What it boils down to is that some of us short on early affection and warm body contact warm up to animals in later life who scratch the itch, so to say. And Beardies, along with their incredibly long, silky, hairlike coats, have a whimsical, playful way which counters the coldness of early life for some of us. So we get these shaggy dogs and get obsessed with them, and enjoy their gifts to our lives.
5 July 2000
Sadly, I leave her this Saturday for a jaunt up through the Haute-Savoie area...Through a valley called Chartreuse, to a stopover in Annecy, across the French Alps to an overnight at Chamonix-Mont Blanc, and then on to the road around Lake Leman (Geneva…) to a quaint village called Yvoire. Then I go to Beaune for a couple of days in Burgundy before heading north to Paris, where I expect to stay till about July 26, when I hope to visit my friends Kathy and Greg for a few days before heading north to Sweden.
I've changed my date of return from September 15 to August 31st. And, I just found out today that the pottery which I thought I lost will in fact be mailed next week. This is a big relief, as there were items there of great sentimental value.
Hope you are all well, and altho I don't really deserve emails since I've been such a lousy traveloguer of late, I'd sure love to hear how you are doing.
xoxo Karen
P.S. My health, except for tiredness, seems to be fine...the symptoms I was having are no longer there, and I'm not sure if I will go to get a scope or not.
9 July 2000
That’ll teach me to wait for the sun. I finally went out into the village of Annecy to eat at about eight in a drizzle, only to find a remarkably beautiful and photogenic medieval town with charming vistas of old stone bridges across swan filled canals amidst ancient buildings painted in intense sherbet oranges, warm peach and contrasting avocado greens--decorated with endless flower boxes and hanging pots overflowing with geraniums, marigolds and complementary lavender blooms which took my breath away. I should have taken the opportunity to shoot some pictures when it was only a little overcast, as when I did so the next morning it was in the rain and I was in a hurry to leave to meet Dody, Gisele’s friend, for lunch in the village Thones on my way up into the Alps. I have discovered, however, that my digital camera can catch color in lousy weather which a regular camera can not, and I think some shots came out ok. (Ha, Ha: 2006 note) I sure hope I can find someone to help me make my color printer work well when I get home, as I intend to have a lot of fun with it. (2006: No such luck. Pixel problems of the times.)
The drive to Thones and then through the alps to Chamonix Mont-Blanc was in rain and fog. Dody met me in front of the church of Thones in a downpour with an umbrella we shared en route to a yum lunch of tiny lamb filets artfully arranged with baby carrots and snow peas on a shallot wine sauce.
Dody quickly became a new friend as we jabbered along with my best fractured French and her bits of English. After lunch I followed her to her sweet little apartment in a Swiss chalet, where we wrote Gisele a postcard and sipped a special liqueur with sticks in it whose name I forgot to get before launching onto the incredibly winding road to Chamonix.
I have learned in life that some of us are more mountain people than others. My first love in college, Matthew, was an avid backpacker who I devotedly followed while huffing sweatily up steep trails with him shouting down to me from his goat-perch above me, “It’ll be worth it Karen...I promise!!” It never really was, as far as I was concerned, but of course I didn’t tell him that. I think it boils down to two things for me--indolence and color. I am by nature not a very athletic person, perhaps because I’ve always compounded my laconic mesomorph metabolism with smoking. And, although I certainly enjoy a campfire, and can be a good sport about sleeping bags and hard ground, to be honest, one evergreen is as beautiful as another, and they’ve just never floated my boat, so to speak. On the other hand, when Matt and I took our ill-fated drive across the country, and hiked through Bryce canyon amidst yellow aspens and the orangely stratified stalagmites, now THAT was worth the sweat. It is against this background of sentiment that my foray into these majestic alps occurred, and suffice it to say that the rain and fog obscuring the dramatic, snow covered tops of the mountains did not help convert me to a mountaineer, even if I was driving a car and not hauling a pack up a trail.
My hotel room in Chamonix was a cozy knotty pine nook with a terrace which, under normal circumstances, would have me staring up close at one of the most beautiful glacial peaks on earth. Who would think that in mid-July I would instead be bundled in my trusty portable down comforter, having sent most of my winter clothes home, on my terrace watching the lower green parts of these peaks through falling rain while the blanc part of Mont-Blanc remained obscured by fog? It was nonetheless gorgeous, and oh how the melodies of nitengales can mock my disappointment and brighten everything. Chortle in the rain they did while water poured a fountain sound into the rain barrel below the house next door.
And, during dinner there was a brief but fortunate clearing of wispy, lumpy fog sausages passing by which at least allowed me to see what I’d driven those treacherous switchbacks to see. The jagged white top of Mont-Blanc and its lower terrace on another peak appeared long enough to sock my solar plexus with their grandeur, and deeply appreciate being graced with even a brief appearance. All of this has aroused a determination in me to return to this region in the autumn, when El Nina has passed, the sun is shining, and the trees turn colors so outrageous that the beauty threatens to stir nausea.
From this magnificence I drove to another yesterday across the fog socked pass and down, down, down the other side, winding sharply past chalet after chalet and then steeply terraced mountainsides turned vineyards until the sparkling view of Martigny, Switzerland spread across the valley before me under bulbous gunmetal clouds and blinding bright white against patches of blue. (One annoying thing about driving solo on such roads is that it's next to impossible to stop for pictures. If you don't fall off a switchback, someone'll smack you from behind and you're a dead duck.) The destination here was the Van Gogh exhibit at Foundation Pierre Gianadda, for which massive posters alternating his portrait of Madame Ginoux with Le Pont de Langlois proudly marked the last several miles of switchbacks into town.
The exhibit made my heart sing, no doubt in part because so many of the works were lesser known and allowed for oohs and ahs of fresh discovery. And, they crossed a time span from 1881 to 1890, allowing one to imagine his internal world change as the years went by. There was a clear shift inside Vincent between the autumn of 88, and the spring-winter of 89, when there appears to have been a transition from his previous simpler, more ordered dabs and lines, to a disorganized and more cluttered period in May of 89 which, in turn, emerged into the first swirly lines of his later work. I will be curious to see if this progression holds true in his Holland exhibits. I imagined it to represent him pulling inside like a snail during a period of inner fragmentation, perhaps touching briefly on psychotic process, which got reorganized as he uncurled out into the round, swirls of starry nights, sunflowers and cypress which we all know so well.
I kept staring and studying the paintings with longing to be able to do what he did so naturally. As if I could osmosise his gift into me if I stared hard enough...trying to figure what color went under another, admiring the impressionist freedom to forget the detail and go for the big picture from afar. My efforts at watercolor have felt so tight, so determined to get the shutters to look like damn shutters.
One painting in particular stole my heart anew. It’s called Mas blancs aux Saintes-Maries, and contrasts very stark white barns with red doors against a deep blue sky and simply stroked orange fields in the foreground. The exhibit book says he used this one to practice complimentarity of color, so no surpise it touches me so. I’ve never seen it before, nor was it available in postcard or poster form. Clearly, I love Van Gogh, and this exhibit warmed my heart all the way to Yvoire, where I am now.
I sit in my room with my feet up to type, as I am now, or out on the terrace five feet away, to soak up the beauty of the setting sun illuminating patchwork landscapes through cloudy skies across a wide expanse to the other side of the lake. I watch the people arrive and depart in swarms throughout the day. In front of me is the harbor home for many sailboats of different sizes and colors. On the other side is a small harbor with littler colorful boats and yet more stunning flowers to incorporate into photos. This place competes with Roussion in Provence for the film sucker town of Europe. So much so that for the first time on this trip, I actually wanted to change my plans and stay an extra night. But alas, can’t do. I imagine the place has been booked for a long time in anticipation of July 14, when fireworks will no doubt fill the skies over the lake to celebrate France’s Bastille Day.
It is now Thursday morning, and of course, the sun is out as I have to leave. But my cynicism over bad luck with weather is tempered by the opportunity to observe my impatience--the fear of missing out on something--and my greed for superlative experience, which can work together to blind me to the beauty of a given moment. Now I must pack and head on.
Bye for now.
Love, Karen
Hi, Everybody.
After leaving magical Yvoire of my last log, I moved on to Burgundy where I stayed for three nights at a wonderful B&B on the hillside overlooking Beaune across gorgeous sloping vineyards. On Friday morning of Bastille Day I met a very friendly retired couple from North Carolina--he a quiet, self-deprecating wine hobbyist, and she a very sweet but loudly chatty sort with a southern accent which wouldn't quit. They both kindly invited me to dinner that night.
Upon our return, our gracious host, Jean Louis, one of the sweetest men I've ever met, gave all three of us a champagne glass, and dragged us to the neighbors' to share a bottle of champagne and thank him for his display of several spraying bursts of colorful fireworks just beneath the house. We marched along behind Jean Louis as he led us in song, belting out the Marseilles as we approached the just darkened household of a baker family, the baker of whom I assumed had just retired to catch enough sleep to get up at 2 am to make all our baguettes for tomorrow morning.
Out to greet us walks a massive, chunky man with a reddish crewcut and handlebar moustache wearing nothing but tight, patterned briefs and a belly so large it hung out over his private parts. To my eyes, he was either roused from bed by Jean Louis' heartful rendition of the French anthem, or sitting there in his underwear watching TV before going to bed. All the lights were off, adding to the sense of intrusion. But soon along comes a wife, an elegant and gracious country grandmother sort with smooth blonde tresses pulled back in a loose bundle and a muted scarf tucked into a classic but very old Chanel sweater. Behind her came a young boy who behaved as if he liked that I loved his dogs but also that I'd best remember that they are HIS dogs first. In my embarrassment over the nearly naked fat man, I'd turned my attention to the two dogs, and immediately fell into Coco, a stunning malamute boy with one blue and one green eye who I let jump all over me and danced with while getting profusely kissed. Then along came the sweet black lab, Belle, who I loved up extra because she has to live in the shadow of Coco's beauty.
After doing up the champagne we bid farewells, none too soon for me.
There’s a running commentary in the travel world about whether it’s better to have reservations or plans or to go with the flow, and this trip being as long as it is, I have had to periodically use up time when I arrive somewhere to make plans and reservations and such for the next segment. This is the most stressful part of the trip, as you spend a lot of money using the internet, things never go as you want, and you end up frittering away days on the phone or computer, feeling frustrated and not like you’re enjoying yourself.
Such was my experience in my beloved Paris, where I would wander around after long mornings of logistical nightmares, with no particular agenda as I was too mentally frazzled to really be present for a serious consideration of the art I love. I was working on the "August Plan", which incorporates visiting Christina by air as the drive was way too long; training to Denmark where I'd stay in private homes near Odense for a few days before taking a ferry to Angelika in Keil; then training back to my car in Paris, where I'll take off on Aug 18 for Brugge in Belgium for 3 nights; then Haarlem outside Amsterdam for 5 nights, and finally, 5 nights in Brussels before I drop off the car to be shipped on 30 August and fly home on the 31st.
Somewhere in the middle of this reservations juggernaut I lost it and fell into wrenching sobs for the real first time this trip, crying into my pillow, "I want to go HOME....I want to go HOME...."
It lasted a couple of days on and off, and one night the tears returned during a magnificently moving performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the majesty of Saint Chapelle, where I took myself for healing. St. Chapelle in Paris sits you in God’s lap surrounded by the oldest and most awe-filling stained glass in France. I sat at the end of the first row, watching the expressions on the faces of these young musicians, with hot, salty tears rolling down my face as the three violins, a base and viola played my soul from dark sorrow to arches of aching beauty to impatient tension seeking release to courageous jubilance and, finally, the gift of tender, restful, peace after the encore adagio. I thought of many things to write during that performance, but most are gone by now. Keeping hold of the moment’s intense emotional truth for later is not simple.
Things gradually improved on the surface, but my body was working it out on another level. My sister, Donna, and her husband, Tim, arrived in Paris at the same time I was there, and we had a lovely dinner together at the restaurant of dear Madame Ginnette Boyer with Laurence and Georges, the couple whose apartment I stayed at in Paris. I'd spent that afternoon visiting with Ginnette while she cooked for the evening, taking down recipes for beef burgundy, clafoute, her famous au gratin potatoes and mouse, while she shared her dismay and disgust with the French government's response to the Concorde crash, and we shared life stories. She invited me to come with her on a day trip to her country home in Normandy when I return from Sweden, which I will do on the 17th.
The next day, Donna, Tim and I visited my favorite Paris Museum, the Marmottan, and that night, returned for another concert at St. Chappelle--this time, a wonderful chamber trio of violin, viola & base doing Bach's Goldberg variations. No tears that time as I was nodding off as my body began its decline into the cold. One final treat before leaving Paris: A chance to meet up for dinner with my friend from Milpitas, Mari, and her daughter Andrea. We had good laughs and a lovely dinner at one of the best Cheap Eats in Paris restaurants before I bid them adieu to go to bed. Then out to the home of my friends, Kathy & Greg, who generously allowed me to leave my car and belongings at their place in the suburbs south of Paris while I went carless into Paris proper...There I re-packed myself for this plane and train portion of the trip, with sneezes every other minute and drippy nose blowing.
Being here with Christina has been a lovely healing time. We met 27 years ago in the summer of 1973, when she and Sam and I went to Hawaii as hippy youngster camper hitchhikers after she courageously backed out of a workshop being given by a narcissistic jerk who'll go unnamed. Whereas I had blocked out every detail of the trip, she has them all perfectly catalogued, such that I've been able to reintegrate a whole piece of my life previously gone to the land of repressed pain over feeling inadequate as one of a threesome in which each young woman longs for but secretly denies competing for male attention. We've had many good laughs, and I am moved by the beauty of her home, the vast Swedish countryside which surrounds it, and the comfort of an old, sturdy connection.
When we last left off, the "August Plan" would have me accompany Christina to her Vermland cabin by a lake for a few days, and then train overnight to Denmark where I'd stay in a private home near Odense for a few days, visit Danish countryside and bicycle around the charming isle of AEros before taking a ferry to Angelika in Keil; then training overnight from Hamburg back to my car in Paris, where I'd take off on Aug 18 for Brugge in Belgium for 3 nights; then Haarlem outside Amsterdam for 5 nights, and finally, 5 nights in Brussels before I drop off the car to be shipped on 30 August and fly home on the 31st.
Well, when Christina and her daughter, Maria, heard this itinerary they looked at one another like I was nuts and joined maternal forces to let me know in no uncertain terms that trapesing off to Denmark, carting my stuff on and off trains and bicycling anywhere was a very stupid idea given the shape I was in, and that what made more sense was to stay by myself in Christina’s house to rest and recuperate while she went on to Vermland. So that’s what I did. I am grateful for their wise nudging, but will be sad to miss seeing Angelika in Kiel.
The rural area where Christina lives is about an hour’s drive south of Stockholm, amidst vast patchwork fields and pastures of various grasses and grains in greens or harvest golds, bounded by dark strips of dark green forests on the horizons beyond. These evergreen woods border the massive octopus extensions of the vast lake which extends from Stockholm through the counryside in all directions for miles.
Properties here are clustered into little hamlets of homes and farm buildings, most painted a dark barn red trimmed in white, just like the Van Gogh painting I saw in Martigtny. You’ll be driving a country road through a brief stretch of woods between a long row of trees and suddenly it opens out to a beautiful vista with such red-housed hamlets off in the distance, surrounded by emerald pastures--this one with majestic resting moose, that one with grazing, baaa-ing sheep, yet another with elegant, prancing thoroughbreds, all next to yellow fields of varied grains sloping up to the barns and houses--some recently mowed by big farm machines into tidy rows waiting to be bundled in the next stage of harvest, others sitting there looking ready to have the same thing done to them in their turn.
Our little hamlet, called Eckeby, consists of a handful of building clusters along a gravel drive off the main road which curves and moseys, first past Ingelil & Lash’s farm of sheep and goats, then down and up to our place which sits on a rise with its main house, barn and two outbuildings, then down the gravel past the small cottage of an ancient Swedish man in worn denim overalls who gardens and smiles but speaks no English, to the neighbors on the other side whose horses grace the view from the east side of the house.
From here on the front porch terrace, a grand yard qua grass orchard slopes down around the house. When I arrived, Christina’s husband was happily cruising around the green acreage on his big tractor lawnmower looking like a middle aged man fulfilling a boy’s childhood dream. He laughed and said, “Ya, sure” when I commented on this. I look out over the tops of various fruit trees to a trio of old birches beyond which rustle in the breeze, bushes of translucent red and black currants, and an amazingly old and well-tamed raspberry patch which has been producing buckets upon buckets of the sweet little rubies for years. Up closer to the terrace is a perennial garden border of sundry flowering plants, many having already passed their zenith back in a riotous spring display of blooming fruit trees, grand peonies, and other colorful blossoms comingled into a floriferous wonderland. To the southwest, vast fields of grain expand, spreading to the dark woods on the horizon and the sparkling lake finger beyond.
Over to the east on my right sits an outcropping of rock surrounded by grass which is the afternoon playground for Ingelil’s two or three dozen goats of all ages. Though they delight me with their bouncing spars and practice humping of one another, I’ve come to learn they're a bone of contention between she and her husband. Seems she loves them too much, spoils them as he would say, such that when they get sold, they’re hopelessly noisy and troublesome to any other owner. Which means an ever increasing goat population requiring more and more work to tend. But for me they are an endearing part of this heavenly landscape.
And, above the horizon, all around, taking up two thirds of my vertical view in every direction, I am surrounded by the magnficent expanse of an ever-changing theatrical sky, with more dramatically stunning cloud formations than I’ve ever seen before. Morning wisps on the clear blue horizon grow into bulbous white puffs with gunmetal grey underbellies, eventually stacking on top of each other from behind the trees on the skyline, up, up and up into the middle of the sky overhead until they’re all merged into a massive dark shape. Maybe a rumble of thunder signals their need to relieve themselves in a brief rain, or maybe brilliant sunlight just sits on top of them until they melt apart or drift away to the east. At day’s end, the clouds may be gone, or they may grow tinged with pink or blue or more grey.
As you can no doubt tell, I am taken by the beauty here, but I've felt too crappy to do much of anything but read British mystery novels. I’d gotten started reading with the two Robert Harris books Megan left me, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, when I was in Paris and carried a book to have while waiting for subways, standing in lines and such. And when I got here to rural Sweden, I found the pickings very slim in English books, so took what was available--mysteries by British women like Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George and Minette Walters. Great time passers, but this dip into the world of bestsellers--whether American or English--has shown me that sadism sells. I guess we’re all so cut off from our own nastiness that it’s reassuring to visit these dreaded parts of ourselves in bizarre characters who are so clearly “not like me”. Grisley as Hannibal was, I gotta hand it to Harris, whose exquisite skill at almost normalizing the wretched, gnawing, hungry cannibal inside was as terrifyiing as the character of Hannibal, himself.
My only regret about this Sweden leg is that I got but a cursory view of the beautiful Stockholm, as I felt too wiped out to visit it proper after Christina gave me the brief pretty-vistas-in-the-city tour on our way from the airport to her home south of the city. It is clearly a gorgeous city with much to appreciate. But, as Christina says, that will have to wait for my next trip.
22 May 2000
My return to Paris was greatly eased by my friend Kathy's angelic agreement to pick me up at Charles de Gaulle. When I called Ginette to confirm our daytrip to Normandy on the 17th, she said she couldn't go with me as other plans had come up to go there with some friends of hers, and could I go another day? This was disappointing, as I'd reorganized my schedule to make room for this plan, but Kathy says, "That's how the French are--they're Latins, you know. Americans make plans and they're set in stone. With Latins, 'things change' and you go with the flow." Hmmm. Anyhow, Kathy and I had three enjoyable, peaceful days to visit together while I reorganized my proverbial stuff for the next car leg.
Brugge, Haarlem and Amsterdam are each one or another version of northern Europe's Venice, the grandma of canal cities, except with different architecture and lifestyles built around them. I broach writing about them as my trip comes to a close, and I'm running out of descriptive steam for yet another spate of charming, quaint, towns. But each has enchanted me despite my exhaustion.
Brugge is perhaps the most beautiful--a remarkably unchanged medieval city with magnificent grand palaces around a central square, many small canals with picturesque bridges, and grand churches everywhere, often with chamber musicians set up outside playing classical music under the dappled shade of massive trees. Brugge is lacemaking central and one day there were many women sitting out making lace in public to show the remarkable dexterity required.
I've used the small city of Haarlem as my base for visiting Amsterdam by train, but I actually like it more than the bigger city itself. It's sort of a quieter, calmer, more manageable version of Amsterdam. There is St. Bavo, a Grand Church (Grote Kerk) here in Haarlem on the customary Dutch "market square" which I'm looking at from my bed here on the 4th floor of a building with great rooftop views. This gothic peach of a church ding-dongs tunes willy-nilly from it's belfry every so often each hour--sometimes just three notes, or perhaps a whole melody, chiming out charmingly over town, with another church nearby doing the same thing at different intervals, so it sounds like I'm living in a virtual music box. Except for how each nite at precisely 9:07, the thing gets stuck on a 3 note groove for 34 minutes, ding-DONG-dong, DING-dong-dong, endlessly the same three notes repeat themselves like a scratched old vinyl record. Drives me nuts as I wonder why on earth somebody out there doesn't go to the bell master and get them to fix this problem. When I asked the young Dutch man who helped me to my car with my luggage about this, he simply shrugged. "I guess folks just get used to it, eh?" "Yeah...after awhile you don't pay any attention anymore." He obviously isn't a Virgo.
Grote Kerk also houses the remarkable Muller organ, built in 1738 by Christian Muller and lovingly maintained since the days when both Handel and a ten year old Mozart played it. It has long been known as the finest church organ in all of Europe, and I attended a free concert there Tuesday night which carried me to heaven, hell and back again on the deeply moving chords of this majestic pipe organ. I bought two CD's to bring home for sharing and to fill my house with the intense feelings it evokes.
As you may recall from my earlier ramblings, I've been looking forward to continuing my study of Van Gogh (pronounced, I've been corrected, Van GoCK with an odd, back of throat emphasis) in Amsterdam and Holland. For years I've seen prints in books of paintings of his which are said to live in "Otterloo", a place which I was hard pressed to find on any map. Well, Tuesday, I took an hour drive southwest of Amsterdam to the Kroller-Muller Museum which is nestled way out in the middle of a massive, lacy wooded nature preserve, a few kilometers from the tiny little townlet of Otterlo. The parklands surrounding the museum are filled with bicyclers of every age, size and shape, biking shady trails to the museum from distant picnic spots or parking lots.
The museum itself was built by Helene Kroller, the wife of a wealthy industrialist, (Mr. Muller, presumably--but not of course Christian Muller who built the pipe organ of 1738!), who had good art taste. Her first purchased Van Gogh was Sunflowers, and her collection grew to include 277 other paintings by Van Gogh, along with works of Seurat, early Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Braque and Mondrian; older dutch paintings, ceramics, ancient Asian porcelain, and many sculptures one views in the airily wooded, grassy gardens through massive glass walls. The architecture is reminiscent of my old Eichler in Sunnyvale. Among VG's works there, besides the "original" Sunflowers, are the Cafe-terrace at Night, (a fair copy of which I have at home which I inherited from my mom, whose friend painted years ago), The Bridge at Arles, and several early floral still lifes....oh, way too many to list. But I was in heaven. And, it continued the next day when I went in to Amsterdam and spent virtually the whole day in the Van Gogh Museum there. Combining what works of his I've seen in other places and exhibits with those from the Martigny Exhibit, the Kroller & Van Gogh Museums, I figure I've seen the vast majority of his paintings which is a way satisfying feeling of privilege.
Then yesterday, I visited the Ann Frank Museum and the famous Reikmuseum (full of old Dutch masters' realistic works, including 'The Night Watchman' by Rembrandt). The Ann Frank house was an emotional visit which stirred deep sadness and anger in me--sadness for the brief life of one who gave so much; and anger that we were cheated of her promise by the nasty fear underlying nationalism, which I continue to view as a basely primitive state of mind, despite what Jewish friends have said to me over the years about that opinion.
The old Dutch realist painters, while truly remarkable in their patience, skill and exactitude, don't do it for me like the impressionists, of course, given my preference for color. Perhaps too, the subject matter of old fat rich burgers, mean looking women of the hospital boards, crossbow guild members, and male orphanage directors who'd scare me to death if I were a kid, leaves me cold, much as I had trouble being in love with the endless depictions of the Madonna, Baby and Pieta all over Italy. But I do appreciate the history of it all, and feel enriched by the experience of seeing it.
Today I'll go out to the Frans Hals Museum here in Haarlem, and then prepare for my departure tomorrow to my LAST destination, Brussels. Perhaps you can detect from the relatively boring nature of this travelogue that I'm getting pooped with the whole thing. My brain feels overwhelmed with all I've seen and done, and I so long to see my girls. I had a blessed meeting a couple of nights ago with a DARLING brown and white Beardie boy named Ginky on my way home to my hotel studio...The minute I approached him, sitting outside his owner's dress shop, in true Beardie fashion, he rolled over onto his back for a belly rub the minute I scratched his head. Then last night I had a terrible nightmare that Murphy was missing when I got home, and I was screaming my head off in endless grief.
Love, Karen
In Dutch canal towns, bicycles rule cars, and folks live in all manner of charming water lodgings, from small old boats with tarps over the rear, half presumably hiding sleeping and eating quarters, to magnificently decked out boats in great colors with flowers draped all over and flags whisping in the breeze.
Bicycles here are all the plain old funky peddlers from our childhoods with NO speeds nor curvy handlebars which require you to lean into the awkward but aerodynamically sound position for speed. I wandered into a bike shop to inquire about rentals and asked the guy, “Are these 3 speeds?”, to which he smiled and replied, “Nope. No gears”. I laughed and said, “Oy. In California nobody’d be caught dead on a bike with fewer than 10!” “Or 28!”, he chuckled.
This world of bicycling is delightfully flat, pragmatic, unathletic and classless. Nobody’s particularly proud of their bikes nor the attire they wear while riding them--nary a piece of spandex to be seen! Fat old couples in their sixties wearing polyester putter along taking in the sights next to focused young women dressed to the nines with clunky high heels hurrying to work or the train station along with varied local matronly ladies and charming ancient gentlemen or hip adults filling their uncool saddlebags with fresh daily provisions. The Haarlem and Amsterdam train stations are surrounded by endlessly long lines of bikes several rows deep, crammed practically on top of each other to access the things you can lock onto. Businessmen in suits jump off the train and struggle to disentangle their bikes from a messy pile without anxiously checking for damage like an American would, and simply take off towards home or work at a leisurely pace with a briefcase hanging from one arm.
This is no doubt a function of living in canal towns with many pedestrian-bicycle streets where cars are more trouble than they’re worth, drivers and even pedestrians are expected to defer to bicyclers, and space for parking lots is nonexistent. And, of course, the train service renders cars dumb. One gets the impression that it’s been this way for so long there’s no particular politics connected to it like there is back home, where people demonstrate on bikes to make it more like this there. But what’s so endearingly different here is the refreshing lack of ego bonding with bikes or the self-righteous arrogance of some bicyclers at home who seem to regard you like an ant when they ride past you--whether you’re on foot or in a car.
In Amsterdam, I’d see this odd subgroup of young, fat females with messy bleached hair verging on dreadlockdom, dressed in overtight white pants and white boob-stuffed tops with heavy eyemakeup and their full lips peculiarly outlined in black pencil but with no lipstick, riding their bikes in those strange six-inch platform tennis shoes with the laces purposely left undone. Whatever it is they’re up to, it must be cool despite how ridiculous they look to me, because I’d often see them resting at cafes over pastry and coffee with guys surrounding them, apparently interested. As one who’s spent her whole life dressing to hide "fat" thighs so I can rob men of the opportunity to evaluate my body, and who would not be caught dead wearing white pants, this was a truly enlightening phenomenon. I found myself thinking wistfully that maybe they’re a new breed of up and coming red-lighters who herald the long overdue reprise of Rubenesque beauty. Ah, well.
Indeed, Amsterdam appears on the surface to be a city of, by and for a population of dishovelled youth--some competing self-consciously to win grunge awards, others just coming by it from a natural preference to disregard superficial matters of appearance, but somehow doing it in an overly purposeful way. It aroused mixed feelings in me, as I’d be wondering one minute when the last time this one washed his or her hair, and the next I’d feel comfortable because my own disinterest in dressing up let me melt into the crowd without feeling as self conscious as I had in Paris or Florence. I’ve appreciated the casual way of life here and what seems like a lesser degree of self-consciousness amongst the people, but then, I’ve not been on the symphony-opera-theatre-haute-cuisine circuit, either, so my view is probably very biased.
Bye for now. And I'm happy to close out tonight saying, "See y'all soon."
Karen
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