Day 94. Gradignon. Nov 8 2001.

A rainy day at home, doing preparations of our train trip to Avignon. A respite from racing around the narrow streets of Bordeaux and a chance to catch up on writing.

There was such a flurry of things that passed us by in the last few days that I was bound the miss a few. Most glaring among the omissions were the plethora of names left from my list of famous painters who failed to make much of an impression on me.

There was a painting by Van Dyck, one by Rubens, Chardin, Van Gogh, so many that they were beginning to flow like water.

Delacroix’s “La Grece Sur Les Ruins De Missolonghi" was stunning and powerful and if it had been in a room alone or with two or three other paintings, each chosen specifically to highlight one another it would stop you in your tracks and force you to explore the visual details for hours. But here, mounted with a hundred other paintings it became nothing more than wallpaper. Nice wallpaper, but but wallpaper nonetheless.

I can't remember if I wrote about the statues lining the entire second wing and I am too lazy to check so I will, perhaps, repeat myself. Only three in particular caught my attention of which I know the title of one and none of the artists. The one whose title I remember was “La Garonne” an allegorical representation of the river Bordeaux faces. It was a bronze of a woman reclining in a flow of water, leaning so far back she is almost lost in the waters. On either side of the flowing water is shore composed entirely of grapes.

It was beautiful but that was not what caught my attention. The piece seemed composed entirely, I’m sure not by the artist's original intention, of irony. Nowhere along the Garonne had we seen anything to evoke beauty or tranquility. Instead the river was a churning mud mess with the detritus of a thousand kilometers choking the banks and spilling out to smash against the docks of the city. Perhaps the artist was thinking somewhere upstream.

The other two that caught my eye seemed to belong to a set. They were statues of women out of marble that had obviously been outside for a very long time. They were weathered and scratched were vandals had gotten to them. One was of a young woman with the idealized body of womanhood, large breasts but perky in defiance of gravity, thin waist, well muscles arms and legs, almost a doll-like form.

The second was a woman, still beautiful, but now with a form that was humanly possible to achive. Full breasts that curved lower across her chest, a more curvaceous figure, fuller but more sensual, less heavily muscled. The pair seemed to show the ideal of beauty and the reality of beauty.

The Museum of Aquitaine, from the day before, had many exciting works of art, many pieces that seemed to capture the feeling of an era, and they were displayed exceptionally well.

The remains of Roman statues, often only the chest and stubs of neck, arms and legs, had lights trained on them to give them a unique glow, or were mounted against a red wall to contrast with the white pallor of the statues. The most impressive piece in the collection was the bronze figure of Hercules striding purposefully through the room. His face seemed so alive that his sightless eye sockets evoked a sense of pity and dismay at the blinding of such a powerful figure.

Many of the Museum's Gallo-Roman pieces had come as the city was excavated to make way for new buildings. One particularly rich source were the excavations for a supermarket's parking lot. Interestingly, since the supermarket was destroying old buildings to get their parking spaces the city of Bordeaux forced them to preserve the facades, so now shoppers park behind 18^th century homes.

Another portion of the museum that really caught my attention was the few model ships on display, although by the time we saw them we were hurrying through the museum to see as much as possible before it closed. There is something so intricate in the workings of a model ship. Even thought they can reach enormous size the detail is amazing and the knowledge required phenomenal. I remember at the naval history museum in Southampton they had displayed the bone model ships made by the French prisoners of war and the guest book had commented derogatorily about the lack of correct detail. You had to ask if the people writing the comments could have done better. It would be fun to make model ships, but there is something infinitely sad about a person making models of ships when they live twelve hours away from the ocean.

Today the rain had mingled with the cold to become a real danger. The water runs through the rocks like the beginnings of a river and though our belongings are wrapped in plastic they are beginning to get wet as the water seeps upward. Somehow the waterproof groundsheet of our fabric home has become waterproof no longer and the spreading stains of the damp congeal into puddles within our tent as we watch, as if the water is willfully forcing its way through the plastic.

I peer outside and see a torrent of water that streams down the gravel road of the campsite. Rain in November is new for us and I can see suddenly why the world sneers at the idea of warmth in Canada. For Calgarians the best we could expect in November is clear skies, the worst, heavy snow. Never rain.

I am reminded of our trip to Prince Rupert where we were almost rained out completely. Yet it was a very rewarding trip. Not so much in the conventional fashion of most vacation, but because it revealed so much about the inner workings of our vast country and the diversity of the people who call it home. The Tsimshian people were so proud of their heritage and their homeland was so beautiful. Deep fjords, misty islands and rain drenched forests.

Somehow I am back on the topic of rain. It will be, I fear, a dominant theme.

We stopped the other day, on our way back from grocery shopping, at the ruins of a wine making estate on the road towards our campground. There was a twelfth century church and an old estate home, both closed to the casual tourist such as we. But the garden was magnificent, overreaching green trees making a ceiling of foliage, only a few leaves clustered on the ground dropped from their lofty perch. There was a pathway of concentric arcs through the green grass and it was lined with flowers of all description, still in bloom. While we stood there the cold chased at us through our jackets and sweaters, chilling skin and making us long for warm soup but it left everything around us untouched. It was as if the cold taunted us and made us imagine that the cold was only in our heads. the beauty made it seem that we are trying to flee a phantom that cannot harm us. But the rain that beats a staccato rhythm on our huddled shelters is real, it has an icy grip and we have to try and get from beneath it, at least for a while.

Bordeaux, despite it’s generous museums and hidden beauty has been a disappointment. The grandeur here has faded beneath a veneer of indifference. You can still see the magnificence, like a beautiful painting left in a puddle of mud at the roadside, but its faint manifestations are almost sad. I know that we have not been charitable to the city, nor credited its successes, the museums and the shopping district, enough. But when cities that boast only half the population, or even less, seem to make more of an effort to show what little beauty they are gifted with and seemed to take so much more pride in their patrimony, you are little inclined to be charitable.

Or perhaps you cannot blame cities but must look more to the individual. Even in Saintes there were those who treated crypts as garbage cans, in La Rochelle those who pissed on the street. There is always a certain percentage who do not give a damn for beauty or heritage.

I cannot help but feel pity for those who strive so hard to make their city beautiful and are defeated by an uncaring few. It only takes a few to ruin it for the many. Michelangelo’s Pieta was wrecked by one crazed man.

At least the people seem to have been very friendly particularly our ticket agent and the guy at the museum. Friendliness makes up for a lot but not the tons of dog shit and not, for us, the rain.

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