The Abundance of Creation — Visiting the Zoo of Endangered Creatures at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Jardin des Plantes Paris, Endangered Guinea Hen

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Jardin des Plantes, Paris, endangered Asian stork with month old chick.

 

 

 

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Dejeuner sur l’herbe, Jardin des Plantes, Paris , 20 mai 2014

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Jardin des Plantes, Paris, Lupines and Lavender  May 2014

 

French Gardens

Today we visited the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical garden in Paris, with its lovely vistas, formal gardens, and wide paths, and its small zoologial collection of endangered species.  Probably the most spectacular parts of the animal exhibits were the huge collection of endangered bovines – gaurs, yaks, and various antelopes among them – and the whole row of owls, one larger and more impressive than the last, until we reached the huge and impressive snowy owl. 

We kept trying to follow signs pointing to an exhibit of an unpronounceable primitive horse, but that animal proved elusive.  I hadn’t realized that this species still existed, and perhaps it doesn’t, as we couldn’t find its habitat in the colletion, despite the tempting signs with arrows.  However, we did find a large ass from the south of France, a “baudet.”.  Its main use prior to World War II had been to breed with draft horse mares, to produce huge mules capable of pulling enormously heavy loads.  But after World War II, in France as in other parts of the world, farmers turned to gasoline rather than equines to power their equipment. So the horses and asses became almost extinct, and still exist only because of the extreme efforts of dedicated conservationists to retrieve the species from the edge of disappearance.  This ass was really impressive – as tall as a horse, with a huge head and with dreadlocks falling down its sides, like petticoats.

 Because of their universally endangered status, all the animals we saw were new and different in our experience.  In the context of creation and universal creativity, it expanded our understanding of the amazing and sometimes quirky variety of creatures dwelling on earth.  Our Creator could be said to have a sense of humor.  This visit to a small zoo dramatically expanded my mind’s eye picture of the Ark and its passengers!

I think Paris is more densely and variously populated than New York. The buses were crowded all day long – a work day (Monday), as were the sidewalks, the cafes, and, yes, the garden and zoo. There were many people of all ages and a wide variety of ethnicities from different continents.  I took a picture of a scene that reminded me of the dramatic expanse of picnickers lying on the grass in Seurat’s painting “Dejeuner sur l’herbe.”  The clothing styles are updated, and the river is missing, but otherwise it was essentially the same scene 130 or so years apart.  Paris doesn’t change so much! 

 

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An Invitation to Mindfulness

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Today, for the first time since arriving last Tuesday, we made it out of the house before noon — if only to attend an 11:30 am Mass around the corner. As the day went on, we actually had both lunch and dinner — another landmark toward achieving a normal biorhythm after the challenge of jetlag.


The silence and the calm in the streets and parks was surprising. It was Sunday, after all, and clearly Sunday is still observed here for the most part as a weekly day of rest. When we left the church after Mass and started down the street, there was virtually no traffic, even where it is incessant on other days. People were strolling rather than hurrying. Or they were standing on the sidewalk, just chatting with friends, as children played around them, riding scooters or small bicycles. Usually the atmosphere on streets and sidewalks is purposeful, not relaxed. We were astonished at the difference between Sunday and other days of the week.


We strolled down the street, enjoying feeling at one with the sense of relaxation around us, and found what turned out to be a hearty lunch at a sidewalk cafe. We had decided to attend a concert that we had seen announced on a poster at the Schola Cantorum. It intrigued us — a whole Mass by Puccini, the famous writer of operas. We'd never known of this piece. We were also interested to learn that Puccini had composed this Mass for symphony orchestra and large chorus as his exit exam from his own conservatory training, in Italy.


We were very proud to have finally mastered the bus network to change buses and get from one place to another seamlessly across the city. So we took a bus from our neighborhood, changed to another bus, and arrived at the Ile St. Louis, in the 4th arondissement. We'd been advised on our first day here, by a clerk in the Metro, to purchase an unlimited weekly travel pass called “Navigo.” With this, for about 20 Euros — a bargain — we can go anywhere in Paris using the Metro or buses, without having to pay any additional fares. We just scan the pass as we get on any public transit vehicle, and we're good to go.


The Ile St Louis church is a large neo-Gothic church that serves the once exclusively fashionable island next to Ile de la Cite, which is the site of Notre Dame Cathedral.The acoustics were quite good. The church was jammed for the concert, which was offered on a donation basis to support Argentinian street children by giving them access to music education. The orchestra, composed of young professional musicians, was truly magnificent. The civic chorus of about 50 individuals was spectacular. The tenor soloist was sublime. The music was ethereal and robust at the same time. The first chord of the Mass was enough to move us to tears, and it only got better after that. The concert was recorded for broadcast — I wonder when and where. It was easily one of the two or three most exquisite classical concerts I'd ever heard — a beauty of sound that will remain in my memory for a long time. After it ended, we applauded for over 15 minutes straight.


The concert ended around 7 pm, and we strolled the length of Ile St. Louis, past restaurants and tea rooms. We were enticed into a tea room restaurant that was quiet, with beautiful classical flute music playing in the background. We ordered a light supper of Parma ham, sliced melon, and Normandy butter with bread. Each element of the meal complemented each other element perfectly for a symphony of tastes and a beautifully composed and artistically colored plate of enticing food.


I was reflecting that so much in Paris focuses on perfect sensory enjoyment, for all of our physical senses. What an invitation to practice mindfulness, to savor and to be fully present in every moment! Having the luxury to visit here, to pursue the pleasure of this great city, is a blessing that truly invites gratitude!

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History Lies Heavy

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Last evening, we were strolling by the Luxembourg Garden, casually looking at the giant photos posted on the iron fence around much of the Garden's periphery. it was a massive exhibit celebrating the hundred year anniversary of World War I, known across Europe as “The Great War.” This war, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, resulted in greater destruction of human life and habitations, both military and civilian, than any other war ever. Today, in 2014, the formerly warring countries across Europe have created the European federation. They have turned to collaboration rather than conquest. The photos, contemporary views of sites that were noted scenes of destruction 100 years ago, showed that despite a hundred years of forest re growth, the earth still bears catastrophic scars of that awful conflict. And despite the great length of time that has come and gone, the modern experience of Paris still echoes with the effects of Germany's now ancient destruction and occupation of this city.

When Nancy went out this morning for bread for breakfast and lunch, she spotted a sign announcing a graduation recital at the Schola Cantorum, a world renowned private music school (similar to New York's Juilliard) right around the corner from our apartment. We attended, and were treated to a range of performance abilities from “future star” to “still needs work.” The caliber really was quite high — world class in a couple of instances. As I relaxed and listened to more serious contemporary music than I'd ever heard in one concert, I was watching the young artists — in their mid twenties for the most part. To participate in these recitals, each of these young people had studied here since high school — 6 or 9 years, depending on their graduating level. They were from all over the world, all striving to excel in the universal language that is music. I was very aware for each one of the amazing physical virtuosity and skill that they were pouring into their performances. For each one, more than I'd ever realized from attending professional concerts in large concert venues, the whole body was mobilized to create sound. The performers had literally become the music. Whether they were singing or playing an instrument, the making of music was an athletic feat — though the music itself might be pure Spirit.


The Schola occupies a 500 year old building that once was an abbey of English Benedictine monks who had fled the Protestant schism in England in the 17th century. Over many years, English Catholics, notably the Sewart family, starting with King James II, took refuge in this building. The abbey was confiscated by the French Revolution in 1789 and then, in succession, became a cotton mill and a prison, before the French government returned it to the English Catholic Church. However, by French law, the building, because owned by a foreign institution, is actually under control of the French government, which has rented it to the music school since 1895. Musicians like Debussey, Edward Varese, Eric Satie, Olivier Messiaen, and Cole Porter (go figure!) have studied and taught here over the years. The concert room, on the second floor of the old building, was fitted with a full sized pipe organ, and the last performer played her piece, a composition by Messiaen, on that organ. I found touching the fact that a student at the school where Messiaen, the most famous modern composer of music for organ had studied and taught, was playing a Messaien piece on the organ that the composer himself had undoubtedly played at one or another time, perhaps for his own graduation recital.


After the concert ended, the 100 or so attendees went down the outside stairs and lingered in the courtyard, a beautiful, serene sanctuary with ancient trees and modern bronze statuary of dancers, surrounded by 19th century apartment buildings lining narrow streets just outside the Schola's high stone walls. As people gradually filtered out to the street, we enjoyed in the otherwise quiet courtyard the beautiful strains of music filtering out from large open windows in the four ancient abbey buildings around us — a soprano singing an aria alternating with a flautist playing a sweet melody. They formed a mellifluous accompaniment to the high sweet voices of two children who had attended the concert with their parents, and were now playing hide and seek behind the broad trunks of ancient courtyard trees.

The lesson of the day seemed to be the depth of history that envelopes every place and every experience in this ancient city. Everywhere one looks, indications of past occupants, events, and sites appears with even a slight willingness to open to them. Our street, rue des Feullantines, for instance, is named for an obscure order of Italian cloistered nuns that occupied a long disappeared convent, with its acres of gardens and vineyards, alll around us. The street is named for the alleyway that led to the convent gates. The chuch down the street, St. Jacques du Haut Pas, started out as a Benedictine abbey founded to tend to the needs of pilgrims walking from Paris on the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostelo, in northern Spain. The church is on St. James St., the route that the pilgrims followed through Paris. Walking up the medieval street toward its beginning, we see that its name changes to “rue du Faubourg St. Jacques”, just across the broad avenue that is now Boulevard Port Royal. This wide, straight boulevard occupies the emplacement of the ancient inner wall that once, a long time ago, surrounded Paris to defend it from maurauding tribes. Now it's a beautiful place to sit and observe the passers-by. Then it was a fortification. The Faubourgs were villages outside that fortification. Now, it's all a seamless part of a modern city.

Our funniest encounter with the history that lies under everything, today, was a street corner shop for movie and television memorabilia and media. Etched in the glass over the front door was the legend, “Store established in 1866,” Hmmmm……

 

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Another Perspective on the Latin Quarter

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Val de Grace and Port Royal. I'd heard of them, but as tourist attractions they're decidedly minor, so I have never actually spent time in this area. Nevertheless, it is our delightful home for a month. It's visually satisfying — typical Paris street scenes with ordinary yet interesting shops, with a spriinkling of secondary art galleries, benevolent non-profits, tiny mom and pop groceries, a tiny hardware store from another era, a whole store with nothing but frozen foods, an Iranian fabric store holding a blockbuster sale (gotta go by there when it's open sometime), a bakery and at least one or two cafes on every block…. It's so very Parisian — a Paris of ordinary folks carrying on normal lives.

 

In our building, we also hear and see the rhythms of daily life. All the recycling cans had been carted to the street yesterday for pickup. Every day, someone stumbles unmusically at great length through simple piano pieces. At first we thought that this was a single person bent on learning piano in record time by practicing for hours at a clip. But there have been too many different pieces of varying levels of difficulty (who knew that the very basic exercises could get more and more basic?) We finally concluded that there must be a piano teacher living in a neighboring apartment. The small child upstairs is also very busy. We have heard no crying or anything like that, but this small person has probably just learned to move on two feet, judging by the running footsteps overhead, for hours at a time. And it is probably a boy, because of the prevalence of toys with wheels, which make distinctive sounds on the wood floors.

 

Like true Parisians, we have sallied forth every day, shopping basket and bags over our arms, to go grocery shopping. There are numerous stores to choose from. We haven't yet beaten jet lag enough to get to the several renowned open air food markets on different streets on different days of the week — mornings only. Right now, as I write this, it is 12:30 pm here,, but only 6:30 am eastern time. We'll look forward to becoming well acquainted with the street markets as the days pass and our biological clocks adjust sufficiently. We're not only misaligned with local time, I think we're also going through a period of catching up on lost sleep from our normal lives. Relaxing is wonderful! It doesn't do much for our roster of attractions visited, of course, But apparently it really was time in both our lives to just sit and chill. These are very sleepy days for both of us.

 

Instead of struggling as we normally would, we're just letting ourselves be, in the present moment, not pushing ourselves to fulfill any specific expectations. A mentality of scarcity would have us hustling, whether we felt like it or not, to not waste these precious days in France by just exploring the neighborhood and fulfilling every day needs, but rather to strike out on explorations wider afield, checking off monuments and museums on our “to see” list. But actually, if, while here, we simply experience well the essence of Parisian living, we will have enjoyed a beautiful vacation experience, replacing sightseeing with attending jazz clubs and church concerts, watching the endless and fascinating procession of characters passing by our comfie chairs at a sidewalk cafe, or savoring the amazingly soulful essence of French food.

 

 

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Paris 2014 May 15 Thanks to Guardian Angels!

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

We got here!

I don't ever want to come through JFK again. I remember this same kind of thing happening at JFK once before — we arrive and, to continue our flight, have to change terminals. This meant going outside, walking a half mile or more, and then, at the new terminal, going through security a second time for the same trip. On paper, our itinerary had allowed two hours between planes. But our itinerary was wrong. There was actually only an hour between our arrival in terminal 2 and our departure from terminal 1. This is virtually impossible to accomplish, especially with the back pain I was experiencing. Then appeared at our left an “assistance station.” A pleasant, helpful, uniformed young woman called for a wheelchair. Within 1 minute a young man with a wheelchair appeared around the corner, and she stopped him and gave him directions to take us to Terminal One. Turned out it was his first day on the job, and he had no clue how to do that, so he asked directions of every airport employee we passed. Turned out later that he'd been called to meet a flight and wasn't supposed to be taking us to terminal 1 at all. But he was our necessary first “guardian angel” to get us to the plane on time, and he soldiered on.

It turned out that not only was there a half mile walk outside from terminal 2 to terminal 1, they'd demolished the sidewalk because of construction, and the police officer at the door just said to walk through the construction debris and then up the middle of the road between the lanes of oncoming taxis. It was the weirdest transfer between flights I'd ever experienced. I was in the wheelchair with two bags piled on my lap. Nancy was walking behind us trailing another bag, and we were walking between oncoming cars toward terminal one. However, we found no direction signs in terminal 1. Fortunately we'd told an officer what we were looking for, and he came running after us as went off looking for a place to get directions, and brought us back to the entrance to take the elevator up a floor. There, finally, were the Air France counters.

Here, we discovered that they had to reprint our tickets because the airline agent on the phone had booked us on a plane different than what was printed on the tickets — there realy were, now, only 10 minutes to make it through a huge security line and to the gate before they closed the plane doors. And the young man with the wheelchair was desperate by now to get back to his original assignment. The ticket agent, our next guardian angel, in less than 5 minutes recruited a second wheelchair (this was the only way to get priority for getting through the 200 or so folks in line for security), figured out the ticket changes, and called the plane to tell them to hold open the door as we were on our way in the terminal. We rushed through security, and the gate agents nodded at us as our caravan, complete with wheelchair ran toward the gate. They motioned us through, and we made it to the plane. After we boarded, the doors closed immediately. Nancy and I looked at each other in amazement — our angels really had allowed us to do the impossible, by being right there at every turn to make sure we didn't stray (like who would ever have figured out without being told to walk across the debris and right up the road through the middle of moving traffic to get from one terminal to another, for instance?)

The flight was smooth — Yay!!

Six hours later, after dinner and about 2 hours of fitful snoozing, we landed in Paris, an hour earlier than our itinerary had said. Apparently facilities at Charles de Gaulle airport were even more overloaded than those at Kennedy. The plane was parked on tarmac, at a place where no airport building entrance was available. We deplaned down a big flight of stairs, and were packed like sardines into city buses more crowded than New York subway cars at rush hour. The buses meandered along a circuitous labyrinth of roads between and under surrealistic structures made of molded gray concrete. These were not buildings with doors and windows, but some kind of alien city-scape of undeterminable function. Our biological clocks were scrreaming that it was around 1:30 am, although it was daylight. The whole ride seemed like some kind of otherworldly nightmare.

Finally, we were let off in front of a door that led inside a building. We traveled together about a half mile of anonymous corridors and stairways, through the lines at the passport checkpoint, and then to the baggage carousels, where we were really happy to see our bags appear — a miracle after the snafus at Kennedy. We piled the bags on luggage carts, and finally exited to the hall where people were waiting to pick up arriving passengers.

We had arranged for a car service to pick us up, figuring we were not going to be too intelligent and awake at that hour after a non-existent night's sleep. Of course we'd told the car service to pick us up at the original arrival time we'd been told, and the changes at Kennedy had all happened with such urgency we hadn't even realized that we were in Paris earlier than we'd said. Our driver wasn't there to pick us up when we arrived, and it took a while to figure out why. Meanwhile, it turned out there was no cell phone service inside the terminal, and we were still trying to figure out how to contact the car agency when the driver finally did appear holding up a card with our names.

So then we were in a van with our baggage and this kind of sleepy driver, whisking off to Paris at the amazing speed of about 2 miles an hour average. How lucky that we'd arrived at the peak of Paris' morning rush hour! The trip that was supposed to take 45 minutes ended up taking over two hours, and finally, after being able to contemplate at luxurious length every building we passed, we arrived at our new home for the month, a 5 story apartment building on a very narrow one way street in one of the oldest parts of Paris. There was only one lane for traffic, so the driver stopped in front, piled our bags up on the sidewalk, took our payment, and left quickly. At this point appeared our last guardian angel for the trip, a young athletic cyclist emerging at that moment from our building, who sized up the situation, asked Nancy to hold the door open, and with amazing speed brought all 6 bags from the sidewalk to the elevator door.

We were here! We were amazed! We were somewhat disoriented, what with little sleep and all the things that had happened so quickly along the way to assure that we actually made the plane change and got from the airport to our new Parisian home with no delays or disasters. When we took the key from under the doormat in front of the apartment, and got it to work in the lock, we felt surprisingly at home and blessed, and grateful, and very tired.

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STIRRING SPRING

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Stirring Spring

March 1 2014

 

This morning from my second story bedroom window,  I rediscover love.

Suddenly the ranks of tree limbs stretching  back into the woods

Are swathed in pink and purple budding leaves

And the world has sprung to life as a swarm of traveling blackbirds

Streak across the window in a blur

And tree limbs hatch them — sudden inky feathered apparitions  launching  and then airborne  everywhere.

Yesterday the brown and wintry woods were resting, still.

Today the goddess Spring is all around me.

Her arrival can no longer be in doubt.

Mother Earth is stirring into vibrant Life,

Blessing all within her nurturing embrace.

 

 

REFLECTION

Within the matrix of so many anguished warnings about the demise of species, upheavals in our climate, irreversible damage to our air and water, the return of Spring  is strangely reassuring.  The earth is still our mother, our home.  Her beneficent round of seasons is still working, with its promise of fertility after rest.  I rejoice when I awake and look outside my window, realizing that in one night winter has departed and spring has burst forth visibly.  How amazing!  I feel deeply grateful both for my second story windows situated among the branches of many trees and for the gift of living in a place where the seasons mark their stately tempo in our lives.

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New York, NY

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

It has been a long time since I've come here to play. In fact, I think this may be the first time since last summer. Whenever I came for a seminary weekend, I'd add a few extra delightful days to the stay to visit with friends, see a museum, attend a show, walk, reflect, enjoy a park, write…. I owe my friend Harry a huge debt of gratitude for having generously invited me to stay with him while I was here.

A year ago this week, I was ordained as an interfaith minister and graduated from seminary at majestic Riverside Church. I'm happy to be able to come back to attend graduation as an already ordained minister and to participate in graduation for several of my friends who are taking that huge step this year. As I do, I'll be rejoicing over an amazing year in which I've felt fortunate to feel I 've been making a difference in the lives of community members at Unity Center of Peace in Chapel Hill. Being in a One Spirit Interfaith Seminary class was awesome, and being a graduate is equally amazing.

I will feel proud to wear my ministerial robes (Nancy calls it “wearing drag;”)

As I was riding in the car from LaGuardia Airport toward the majestic buildings of Manhattan, I felt joy in my spirit to be here again. It's a place that's been a magical adventure all my life, from the stories my relatives told of visiting the New York World's Fair in 1939, the year I was born, to the moment of my graduation the first Sunday in June of 2012. Although I grew up on the widest fringe of New York influence, in Rhode Island, New York always called to me. When Ellen and I got together in 1999, I was thrilled that she was a New Yorker, and loved the time we spent together in her beautiful loft in her home town. It was then that I adopted New York as my home town, as well.

This week, I plan to do all the things I enjoyed doing while I was in seminary — as I honor the first anniversary of my ordination in prayer and reflection as well as gourmandise and fellowship. It's a fantastic combination of ways to celebrate!

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L’amities — Friendship

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

It was a wonderful fiftieth Reunion — I thought I had missed mine when it coincided with my final retreat before being commissioned as an interfaith miinister in June, 2011. I realized when I had to give up that reunion from my college years that since I hadn't really had any close friends in college, it wouldn't be so terrible to miss that 50th reunion. But I'm so very glad we came to Grenoble to visit my friends from 50 years ago at the University of Nancy in eastern France. We had been a very close community of like-minded students — a wide variety of academic disciplines, including theology, various sciences, history, psychology, linguistics, but a shared love for traditional spiritual values, for social justice, and classical music. It was the latter that had drawn us together, as we had become acquainted as members of “The Little Choir of Nancy.” This was an ambitious community choir made up of university students. We practiced regularly and gave occasional concerts. We even, once, made a recording — a vinyl album, the musical medium of the early 60s.

There was a core group of choir members who were drawn to each other in friendship. We became a close extended family of choice, spending many weekends together on retreats or trips to places in the nearby countryside where we could be together, walk, and explore what was nearby. The group also, on weekends when we were not on special excursions, spent Saturdays regularly practicing rock climbing and rappelling in a quarry near Nancy. The goal was to make a weeklong trip on foot at high altitudes in the Alps, called “Le Tour du Mont Blanc.” This trip involved various adventures in glacier walking, rappelling, climbing rock faces — and we had all practiced assiduously until everyone was competent in all these skills, because such a hike was risky.

I was not able, despite practicing just as much as everyone else, to build the upper body strength necessary for the climbing and rappelling, and I had to forego participation in the 4 hardest and highest days of the trip. I spent the first two nights and the last one with the group, however, as a core member of it. My friends did not blame me or judge me for what I couldn't do, which I appreciated deeply.

Now, here we were together again, 50 years later. It was a joyful reunion, desired for decades. Friendship is amazing! How can people be good friends, then keep in touch by only the most fragile of links for 50 years — in this case annual holiday notes across worlds and languages — and then, after a lifetime apart, pick up again as if there had been no separation? I've experienced this previously. I know it happens. Still, we were brash, innocently optimistic, energetic 20-somethings — university students — back then. Now we are seasoned — even elderly (in our 70s and 80s) — grandparents, great-aunts and uncles. And yet it was as if we had spent our lives in ongoing contact. There was no unfamiliarity, no sense of distance or awkwardness. Instead, we felt connected still — loving, even. It was enough to make me feel comfortable with the idea that we had been together in different ways in different lifetimes, and indeed, within the perspective of eternity, this is just one of an infinite history of intertwined lives. We know each other that well.

Our reunion brought happiness to all our hearts, and when we had to leave again, we felt supported and connected more strongly than I would ever have believed possible.

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L’Imprevisible — The unexpectable

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

The last three days, once we left Paris and got settled in Nancy, have been full of unexpected turns — one of the things that we should expect on trips, I guess.

Fifty years ago, in 1964, I left this ducal city with its proud and independent heritage only firmly allied with France for the last 300 years or so. I left a piece of my heart here. I 've often reflected on the heartbreak of leaving, and of the pleasure it would bring to see it again. The leaving was of my own accord. I had a teaching job and a small apartment that I loved. I had a community and friends I loved and who loved me. I was just at the brink of settling down and starting to build my life as a foreign resident of France. But when I looked around at other foreigners I knew, people from the UK or from Eastern Europe who had done the same thing, I could see that they had made a serious trade-off of identity in choosing to live here in the place they adored, as did I. They were, even 20 or 25 years later, still foreigners, stlll standing uncomfortably astride two languages, cultures, allegiances, identities, and never fitting into an easy category. It's the fate of the expatriate.

I don't think I ever really expected to see Nancy again, but I'm glad I have. I've come back into touch with a part of myself that I'd forgotten about– the 20-something, blissfully unaware of the lifelong impact of the choices she was making, seeking to make decisions that would lead to a productive and engaged life,little realizing that she would need to confront the same issues wherever she chose to live. My heart was breaking as I left behind the place that I loved, and the friends I loved, some very deeply. I had thought it prudent to detach before I couldn't, and go back to what I thought of as “home.” As it turned out, I was as much a foreigner in my home country as I was in my adopted one. And it was already too late to detach as commpletely as I thought I could.

Yesterday, we made a trip into the countryside near Nancy, to visit a friend with whom I'd been very close when here, named Francoise. Francoise still lives, as her mother did, in the house where she was born, and where her mother had been born before her. It's a proud old 19th century farmhouse, with an attached barn where the cows and horses once wintered, with its own self-contained smokehouse, and with several bedroom wings to house the different branches of a large extended family. For decades now, Francoise has lived there alone. She has maintained and updated this house beautifully so it retains its historic integrity and yet is comfortable in terms of modern amenities such as central heat and up to date bathrooms. The kitchen, though it now has hot and cold running water and a modern gas range, retains and still uses the original sink made of a large slab of limestone, the old walnut kneading table big enough for a very tall adult to lie flat along its length, and the huge cooking fireplace taking up one whole wall of the kitchen. In the living room, though it's now purely decorative, stands the tiled wood stove that was the source of heat for the family during the winter. Behind the house is the strip of land that still contains vegetable and flower gardens, berry bushes, and fruit trees — pretty much all the land a large family needed to be self-sufficient in feeding itself, with vegetables and fruit along with the chickens, cows, and pigs it raised. The cows and horses grazed outside the village, which is composed of row houses lined up along a single road, a stone barn separating each dwelling from the next. When I was here 50 years ago, the farmers still raised livestock and piled up manure from the animals in front of the barns. The village then was pungent with composting manure. Now it has more of a suburban feeling, with cars parked in front of houses where the manure had once slowly transformed itself into fertilizer.

As we descended from the train at the tiny station of Vezelise, there was Francoise waiting, tears in her eyes. She is now 82, but still strong and alert. She led us to her auto, and we rode with her the mile and a half to her little village. She had made a wonderful lunch for us — out of all proportion to the three hours we would spend with her, almost all of which was occupied by the leisurely lunch, one course after the next. After the coffee, she showed Nancy and me around the wonderful old four story house built around a small cenral courtard — totally amazing to see this place in the 21st century! I had been a guest of their family fairly often while I lived in Nancy, and I remembered most of the house — much of which is the same now in every way as it was then.

We ended our tour in the large garden with its several fields one in back of the other. This village is laid out in the same way as the Village of Old Mines in Missouri was laid out for the land grants given to French settlers in the Louisiana territory of America in the early 1700s — strips of land stretching back a quarter mile or so from contiguous attached houses that abutted each other along both sides of a road.

The time to leave came all too soon — Just 3 hours to catch up on 50 years of busy lives well lived. Nancy and I both saw the depth of affection that Francoise had kept alive for me all these years, and we were deeply touched.

This morning, there was something about not really wanting to leave Nancy. Nancy (my spouse, not the city) first read the tickets wrong, so that we arrrived at the station to leave at the time the train was supposed to arrive at our next destination, Colmar. That's easy enough to do, and wasn't terribly upsetting. It seemed to mean that we would have to take a train to Strasbourg and then transfer to the Colmar train, instead of being able to ride directly between Nancyy and Colmar, and we'd arrive in Colmar a couple of hours later than we'd expected. No big deal. I checked with one of the station agents, who said no problem, we could use the same tickets on the next train.

Here's where things got strange She wrote down for me that the next train left at 12:45. So we bought some bottled water and prepared to wait. During this time, I became acutely aware, probably for the first time since it had occurred, what a wrenching experience it had been 50 years ago to leave Nancy, and the life I had built for myself there. I realized that this was the origin of a recurring dream I'd experienced for many years, of leaving a place where I'd lived for a while, and not being able to take everything with me. No matter how hard I tried to get all my stuff packed and ready to leave, there was always something that went back into the closet after I thought I had packed it. This dream, when it happens, goes on interminably. I never do manage to really leave the place (which is represented in my dream by an open armoire with a few garrments or a bag or a series of books and papers returning stubbornly to their place instead of staying in the bag where I've packed them. Nancy was the place I couldn't leave! I never realized that before.

The oddity was that the railroad clerk had written the wrong departure time for the next train, so that we ended up missing that train, too,, and were again left behind in the station at Nancy! Just as in my recurrent dream, we appeared unable to leave Nancy this time too, through a bizarrre coincidence.

My companion Nancy asked me did I think there was some spiritual block against being able to leave, and I had to admit she was probably correct. It was time, right now, to take care of that and let go my subconscious regrets about my decision to leave. Retroactively, I had to Let Go my remaining attachment to my life there, and to the love that I'd never really left behind for friends and for the place where I for the first time had found myself as an adult and started to build a successful life. Saying goodbyes are always hard, and this one has remained with me, unfinished, for the last 50 years. Finally getting to come back has allowed me to finish this previously unfinished business, and I actuallly feel a little lighter as the train (finally — we did make the third train) forges east through the Vosges Mountains toward Strasbourg.

And as I think about it, I'm happy in my present life. I don't need to regret that I decided to leave Nancy.

 

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Jouant au “cache-cache” avec le temps

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Rev. Dr. Rosemary C. Hyde,

Like New York, Paris is a solipsism — totally self-involved, self-referential — a hyperactive collective act of navel gazing. In people's minds, nothing exists beyond its glorious borders.

Yesterday was our last day, for this trip, in the capital. We visited the oldest Parisian church, St Germain-des-Pres, another time machine experience of standing in one place with each foot firmly planted in a widely differing century. I wonder what early Franks would think to visit their city briefly today in 2013 and find, amid the wildly unimaginable, the changed and yet obviously familiar faces of important landmarks from their earlier lives. They would know they were in the same place, even though it's been 1600 years, over a millennium and a half, since their time.

On the other end of the time spectrum, we also visited yesterday the newest museum in Paris, the garish, brightly colored Centre Pompidou. Its bright exterior displays blues with chartreuse and turquoise, with what appear to be pipes and tubes serving as walls — its interior is marked by neon signs and galleries full of 20th century art, from beginning to end. We focused on the art created since 1960, figuring that we did not know as well this more contemporary period. I walked into one room and let out a cry — there in front of me was a very familiar painting, a wildly colorful call girl painted by Ed. Paschke, who had taught briefly at the community college in St. Louis, MO, where my ex-husband Ron and I taught for over 35 years, and who, before that, had been Ron's classmate at the Art Institute of Chicago. In this foreign and disorienting place, to come face to face with such a blatant reminder of a home now in my own past was a bit disorienting. Such is the nature of time and space — it's actually unreal — one of our basic illusions of earthly experience.

After a little “aperitif” — a before dinner rest and drink (in our case non-alcoholic) — we tried to find a bus stop to get back to “our neighborhood” for the trip, the Pantheon, to dine in the cafe that had become our temporary “neighborhood hangout” where a jazz band was holding a concert during the dinner hour. They were very good — a four piece band with strings and woodwinds, playing Parisian – tinged jazz reminiscent of the 20s and 30s. We enjoyed our simple dinner and, hand in hand, returned to the hotel to pack for a very early departure this morning — Friday May 10.

I'm writing this on the train as we speed eastward on one of France's amazing high speed trains. It will stop only once before we reach Nancy, our destination, and we're hurtling along through hilly green, brown, and yellow- flowered fields — clover, plowed and planted but still bare, and mustard-filled. W'e'll soon disembark in Nancy, where we plan to spend three days. Finding myself once again, after 50 years of absence, in the eastern French countryside provides yet another experience of the total elasticity of time.

And finally here I am, back in Nancy, where I first felt truly at home in the world in my early 20s, in 1962 to 1964! I haven't made it back here even once since then. A lot has changed. But some things remain recognizable. I'm now playing the role of the Franks I imagined revisiting their former haunts around St-Germain inn Paris, as I revisit my city. Nancy has grown much larger — there is new construction — a lot of it — meaning that whole neighborhoods of earlier times have disappeared. I could hardly wait to come back to the very house that I was so happy to live in during my second year here — a formerly prestigious (even in the 1960s!) individual house in the row of similar houses built in the 1600s for the associates of the ruler of the province, Duke of Lorraine. This is on the central boulevard in downtown Nancy, leading to the Ducal Palace,which is next to Number 36, the house where I lived. Today the house is unpainted, stained, sagging, cracked — in very sad condition. It is still occupied, at least. I stood before it, thinking back to the happy times I had spent right there, and felt sad to see its neglected condition, and at the same time felt glad that I'd had the memorably good experience to live there.

In this life, time is immaterial and largely fictional, even as it provides a grid upon which we can suspend specific moments we have lived. A basic experience of this trip is timelessness — or perhaps we can say its a form of time-travel! Since arriving in France, I've felt that I've in fact been playing Hide and Seek (cache-cache) with time.

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