A quiet place.
A window to this artist is not just a transparent barrier between him and the weather. It’s a place for colours and picture tiles and wooden shutters and an iron grill. The plaque says: “In this house the painter Willy Mucha lived and worked from 1940 to 1995. Friends of Willy Mucha.” See how he has inlaid some tiles in the wall around the window frame?
I found a small image of one of his paintings and pasted it below. It’s Collioure in its sunniest colours.
This is an inviting house tucked away on a hill in Port-Vendres, France. Check out the tricky second entrance, up the ladder.
At the left of the house is a gate surrounded by multicoloured mosaics on both sides. Here’s one side:
Take a look, too, at Ailsa’s travel photos, especially the multicoloured hot springs. Totally awesome. She proposed the multicoloured theme this week.
Late one October afternoon, I was returning from the Louvre when an orchestra began to set up in the square I was passing through. I stopped to see what they would play; as they began Danse hongroise by Brahms I nearly floated with love for Paris. And that was despite my swollen and aching feet; moments before, I had been desperate to return to my apartment to take my shoes off. (The Louvre is immense and I’d walked miles viewing its exhibits.) But I didn’t want to forget these musicians playing me live classical music for the price of a coin donation, so I snapped them and responded eagerly to their proposal that I buy their CD of pieces by Brahms, Dvořák, Bizet and Albeniz.
The CD cover says simply “Classique Metropolitain” without naming the musicians. Pity. I’ve played it frequently since that day and never tire of it. It’s particularly good when I’m translating, when I don’t want to hear the words of songs sung.
Ailsa proposed this travel theme of ‘Play’ after seeing some people play football waiting for a traffic jam to clear! Take a look.
“Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff’s dwelling, ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.”
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Wuthering is the word that played in my head one day in May as I walked along the cliffs beside the Mediterranean, in winds strong enough to blow me over the edge. I was alone up here for half an hour until defeated by howling gusts. The wilder the wind blew, the more scenes I recalled from Brontë novels where heroines wander in windy places. This isn’t the English moors, but these cliffs gave me nonetheless a Gothic taste of desolation with a hint of fear. At least on the moors there is no jagged edge to tumble over.
Before you leave, click here to see Ailsa’s photos of places where the wild things are.
John Milton, I’ve read, completed his Masters degree at Cambridge in 1632 at 24 years of age and then moved back home with his parents for five years, where he worked on some of his best-loved writing. But it wasn’t until 1645 that any of his poetry was published; the book was called Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos’d at several times.
His poetry was not published again until 1667 at the age of 59 when he had been totally blind for 13 years and had been married 3 times, and after he had worked on the piece for at least 9 years. He was paid £5 for a print run of 1500 copies of his masterpiece, Paradise Lost.
Here’s an excerpt:
Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany’d; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleas’d. Now glow’d the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.
Last night I found this excerpt from Paradise Lost in my old school poetry anthology. When I read the line ‘Now glow’d the firmament With living sapphires’, I remembered a 12th-century church ceiling that I recently saw in Saint-Génis-des-Fontaines in the Pyrénées-Orientales, France. During the day the skylight produces a simulated moon shining in a starry midnight blue sky, and the patches no longer covered in paint resemble night clouds or constellations. Even in this interior, the moon has thrown ‘o’er the dark her silver mantle’. The photo, left sitting on my computer screen and viewed from across a room, has fooled me more than once.
Click twice on the photo to enlarge it.
It does me good to read that a Cambridge Masters graduate worked on his writing for 35 years before producing a masterpiece.
Marianne of East of Málaga had the idea of finding a subject worthy of an impressionist painter’s interest. For me it’s this view, one I reckon Monet would have painted if he had been on my balcony. And he could very well have stood on it – the building has been there for a century or two!
Two views from the same spot; different days, different hours:
Marianne proposes we recommend two blogs worth commenting on. I found these two which show amazing wedding photography though neither of the bloggers is a professional photographer (yet); have a look at what’s possible when you love what you do:
Ramblings: http://monahoward.com/2013/05/31/a-story-of-love-and-courage/
therebeccapapers: http://therebeccapapers.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/texture-and-light/
Wine talks. Everyone knows that. Look around you.
Blackberry Wine, Joanne Harris
*****
I bought this book at a charity shop just before leaving for France, and read it during the first three weeks. I was staying in a small untouristy village and when I found the story turning on another small French village and its future – draw tourists or perish – I started to live in the book, unable to put it down. I finished it at 4am on the morning of my last day, reading it to the end to cure my insomnia. (It didn’t.) My bag was already packed, already too full, so I placed the book on the shelves with several other English language novels; it seems this flat is only ever let to English speakers.
I liked Harris’s tricky point of view – it’s the bottle of wine that narrates the story.
In the photo below there are two signs. I’m guessing you can read the sign on the right, Mister Tacos Sandwicherie. But as for the other one, since this week’s photo challenge is “The signs says…”, the photo gives me the opportunity to tell you what the sign says:
“This home was built by the Lyonnais magistrate, Claude Paterin, under the reign of François 1st. Its name was later changed to the House of Henri IV after the monarch had a short stay here in December 1600.”
A bust of Henri IV sits in a niche above the sign. However, it was not his property but a private mansion. He stayed here for a short while after his marriage to Marie de Médicis in the Cathédrale Saint Jean, a few streets away, which was when and where they met. The marriage produced issue, ancestors of some of the present European royal families including Prince William through his mother’s family. But apart from this, the marriage was an unpleasant affair for Marie who shared her husband with several of his mistresses until it all ended when Henri was assassinated ten years later.
The house is at 4 rue Juiverie in old Lyon where most of the Renaissance buildings have been restored and receive constant attention. Unfortunately, while someone occupies the upper floors of the building, judging by the pot plants and the open window, the Hotel Paterin has been sorely neglected on the lower levels and now houses Mister Tacos, though even this shop looks like it has closed down. I was shocked by the two signs, visible together in one glance and disturbing enough to make me look back.
The photo challenge this week is to take a photo of myself, perhaps as a reflection, so that the background is more interesting than the subject.
Today I found this piece of reflective metal at the bottom of a whole-wall fresco here in Lyon, France. So, I took the hint, took my camera and photographed myself on the street with the fresco. My mind never quite accepted that these people were painted onto a two-dimensional surface. Even now, looking at my photos, my eye is fooled into thinking they are real.
This mural covers the entire blind wall of the building at the corner of 49 Quai Saint-Vincent and 2 rue de la Martinière. There are 24 historical Lyonnais characters on their balconies, going back further in time as they rise up the wall. At ground level there are 6 contemporary personalities (not including me). The fresco was produced in 1994/95.
Here’s another view which I liked so much that I’ve attempted to blot out a nasty dark mark made by an idiot dragging a black pen or brush through all the faces. I think I’ve improved the photo but unfortunately it’s not easy to remove the real mark from the fresco without retouching the artwork. Isn’t it fantastic, though? All the people to my left are painted, they don’t exist, nor does the brickwork or the doorway.
And one more, just because I’ve bought some important books in the bookshop, Gibert Joseph.
I’ve walked a million miles in the past few weeks, many of them on sealed surfaces and others on dirt paths. The following photos were taken on two difficult climbs. The first two show the path up to the Abbey of St Martin of Canigou in France; I walked up the 3 kms and down again which was steep but not TOO harsh because the path is sealed. But some older people in our group took the optional jeep ride which apparently is not always better; some said they had vertigo looking at the edges.
This next photo was taken from half-way up a steep dirt track on my way to Cap Béar, though I never got there. When I reached this point my heart was pounding and I was breathing heavily, absolutely alone and a wee bit scared, so I made the decision to descend. The track is grazed out of the hillside and sometimes supported by improvised stone steps. Very steep but not frightening for genuine hikers. And on the subject of pathways, from up on the hill there’s a great view of the pathway to the lighthouse, that is, the jetty.
This post was inspired by Ailsa’s Pathways: have a look at the awesome paths she has trod.