if . . .

The five hour walk with the Cised group in the Versailles Gardens and Park proved delightful despite the grey skies. Minimal crowds, perhaps deterred by the cool, wet weather, made for a leisurely pace. Though defiantly the garden of  Andre Le Notre  a wonderful contemporary ambience infiltrates with the works of  Giuseppe Penone . He articulately states: “Being given the possibility of letting my work dialogue with that of Le Nôtre in Versailles is a great privilege. The garden is an emblematic place which sums up Western thought on the relationship between man and nature.  Laid out to exalt the power of one man, it underlines the force and power of nature which minimises man’s action, requiring unceasing maintenance work to preserve it.  The complexity of the garden’s design suggests the multiple ways of seeing it, and its extension and grandiose aspect contrast with the tiny dimensions of the person walking around it. The individual disa...

Visited a dear friend at Maison de Sante de Bellevue . He was frail looking.  Thoughts came to mind. We are made of a core that expresses the entire concept of self much like a radical the main component of an ideogram (an ideogram being a written sign that expresses an entire concept rather than a sound like a letter of the alphabet). When a clear gaze comes from outside the core can draw attention - various at[tensions] The core may be a gate or threshold and is certainly a border. We listen to each other on the threshold as we h[ear]. We are receptive to a gleam coming from an invisible gleam of self. Through the cracks in the core we see in-between spaces as the sunlight and/or moonlight shines. Our sounds stand beneath the core as a darkness ... the sound doesn't block the gateway but connects this side with the other so hearing is no longer impeded ... yet  the sentence is a wall. Think of self as gateways/openings not as repositories/containers ...

Rain & alchemy. On the seventh day it rained all day. All day the water washed the collective mind we inhabit. A chair & a mirror were assembled & the space creaked a little more open as a blind, bowl & sheet shone. Simple utilitarian items that together make living less harsh. The day before we had traced a path to Choisy-le-Roi where hung from an enormous ivy entwined tree two aluminum sculptured pieces by Louise Bourgeois . At first they resembled beehives but on closer examination were two bodies wrapped around each other. Or were they mouths being gagged? Named " The Welcome " they identified the newly married, especially emigrants from all around the world: "... are you welcome. Or are you foreigners we want to get rid of? " The streets were relatively empty and plums fell from sidewalk trees. In the evening a huge embrace from Robert Bresson's nephew followed by beer & cheese and talk ranging from renowned French geog...

Summer afternoon by the Siene. Once you've seen Cezanne apples you can't look at apples the same way again. Really? She tells me she doesn't have a plan. There is worry on her face and she jokingly corrects herself. When you walk the streets of an old world city do you feel the ghosts of history oppressing the space within? Why do we want to capture ourselves in the picture of Notre Dame? A child plays the Play Me I'm Yours piano in Hopital Hotel Dieu as we seek solace from the unknowable. Bandages and silent corridors of people murmuring in black provide relief. But when the sky opens on the Pont au Change bridge the Seine flows through the radiance of the panorama of the city with it's golden domes and white stone walls and the talk on the spirit of place, how objects or closed spaces contain the past, dissolves. How deep is the Siene? Pass the backside where you dare not walk at night trying to identify the year of the blue doored building, its splen...

Viewing Monet's Nymphéas series at the The Musée de l'Orangerie , In the Tuileries gardens, Paris is a deep meditation of a sustained practice on the presence of light ... ... the Water Lilies panels change moment by moment under the natural light filtering in through the daylight sky ... the serene movement of the eight curved walls (Morning, The Clouds, Green Reflections, Morning with Willows & four others) within the two white elliptical rooms is broken only by the awkward jerky humans walking through the Gallery ... an education of the eye ... Look to where the light reflects. Look with peripheral vision. Move slowly & enter the color. Be still & breathe with every movement. Adjust the gaze & release. When you are empty smile. :: Note :: ... we immerse ourselves for two hours bathing in the "decompression space" ...