Paris 2013

The week in Paris and even the first several days in Amsterdam have been unseasonably arctic – thanks to some deeply southern shift of the jet-stream that usually traverses Britain. Frigid, frequently sunny, exhausting and marvellous. Increasingly keenly aware of the often imminent or not termination of things. Perhaps this reflects a constipated spring, but it allowed me to reflect on how material reality, all of it, comprises sandcastles of beauty. We may guard them and revere them, but sooner or later all will come down. That is a law of materiality. So it becomes perfectly understandable concerning salvational appeal – for many, for nominally at least half the world. But Hindus and Buddhists opt instead for a comprehension that a one-time-only death is too easy an out. You need to work for that final exit. By contrast, of course, the pagan wants to come back. But if that last were equally possible to be the case, one still is required for the full life to experience its decline as well.

So the delayed birth of spring, of Ostara in a word, has allowed or accentuated or both thoughts of mortality in place of those of rebirth, of youth, of newness, freshness and joy. And yet it has been none-the-less a period of complete joyfulness. The world is dazzling, Paris is dazzling, even Amsterdam dazzles in a wondrously individual way. But for Les Pays Bas, it is also an initial time for re-setting things up, for cleaning, for contacting and all the basics. Paris was a pure week of freedom. We walked our asses off – and may be paying for that still too, but it was our choice – to do what we want, to go where we want, to move at the rate of speed we want.

All this against viewing the winding down of the cosmic mechanical clock – for each of us, for all of us, for all of it in some black hole final exit. Perhaps. And does it matter? There is the possibility that none of us will know it when our lives have finished. There are other possibilities of course, but the ‘not-knowing’ could possibly be the worst-case scenario. Epicurus advised to have no fear of death.

But for all that and despite the dailies horrors and frightening developments the news ceaselessly pumps out to us, it’s a miracle that our world functions at all. Perhaps she will not in a not-too-far-off future, but for the here-and-now, she does. And she does well. And the beauty her children produce is an offering to whatever gods there may or may not be, as a flowering vortex – made up in turn of countless ‘aesthetic black holes’, as affirmation qua affirmation, frozen in the general course of time ritual prayers. These are our works of art: Paris, the d’Orsay, La Musée de Gustav Moreau, the Pyramids, the Mona Lisa, the Pantheon and every moment that is perceived, felt and lived as sacred.

So for us, Paris really began with “L’Ange du Bizarre” – the d’Orsay Museum’s exhibition of dark romanticism: from Füssli to Max Ernst. The eerie depiction of Pandemonium with brooding palace and streets molten with fire launched it for me. The assembled collection as a whole could not be described exactly as ‘uplifting’, but it was an awesome experience that in a growing spirituality of the day allowed for a beauty in the black. Interestingly, the exhibit itself did not trigger euphoria, but much if not everything beyond it has.

Evenings with most of our friends – Marie Laure, Anne Laure, Françoise, Rachida, Thomas and even Jean-Christophe and Carlo (who most mercifully carried our super-heavy luggages in their car back from Paris to Netherlands), even Meg (as well as a host of new people at Marie-Laure’s 60th birthday party: Karen, Danielle, Stefana, Damien and up-and-coming super chef Benjamin Darnaud). Marie-Laure is alone a wonder: svelte, stylish, brightly intelligent, elegant and dynamic. She even arranged for us to be present for the bee-keepers training in the Luxembourg Gardens. And since reaching Amsterdam on April Fool’s Day, we have seen Jim, Chloe, Rosemary, Nina, our neighbours Pierre and Gunter, Nick and Ilonka, Warren and Eric, but for our first Saturday evening meal we are expecting Jim, Vicky, Fred, Carlo, Jean-Christophe, Stephan & Koen, Gin & Warren and maybe Saskia.

So it is and has been exhaustingly full and fun. We have launched ourselves into our April nefastus but for a first time modified and open to certain rituals that we previously suspended. The goddess of the east is also the goddess not only of dawn but also of the vernal equinox. May she be welcomed when she deigns to make her appearance!