Needs no Instagramming. Medieval stained glass, baby.

Sainte Chapelle, Paris, France: And you know, in Paris, they had to wait (and wait) for the light, hoping for a wind to knock the clouds away, completely giving up in December and January, hanging in for plenty of miserable days in April, even May, but someone planned, expecting that the light would return, that there would be a sunny Sunday when it would gleam bright alchemy. Here is my oldest question: Is that religious faith or is it art? Is religious faith the same as the dream of sharing beauty? And where did it get them, the old craftsmen?

They are travelers, too.

They’re in every town, and I don’t mind them, young angry kids, don’t worry for them too much, but I do fear for the dogs. We could hardly stand seeing these little puppies in Nimes….

Passed the Cartwheel Test

Jays Paris: If you dream of hotel rooms large enough to accommodate a cartwheel. (And they’ve got a bunch of other nice things going on, too.)

Alaia Show in Paris

More reverence here than at Sainte Chapelle, Notre Dame, and Sacre Coeur combined.

Greeter at St. John of the Kings, Toledo monastery commissioned by Queen Isabel

In case I forget where I and all my best friends are headed, the Spaniards never do.

dropped by las meninas too

I did check in with the desperate Las Meninas. Not desperate: (who’s desperate?): the supremely confident Las Meninas that shows the terrible tentativeness here, now, we’re all dancing with when any moment the king might show up to kick some ass or love us to death (life doesn’t know how strong it is) and even the king, who makes the world’s sweetest faces twist up and she must have seen that, hated it, hated part of it even as she drank it like a good vampire. 

Also saw Goya’s drowning dog. 

Some of the paintings you see in books and ads and online so many times that it’s hard for them to be (seem) (be) fresh, to strike you clean. (see John Berger on the topic of the Da Vinci of Mary and Anne and the babies in Britain.) But not Las Meninas. The surprises continue to roll in, like the child wobbling in on the right, a great threat en route. 

(a pic maybe)

At the end of a short, bright alley in Madrid, chocolate

The word on S Gines, the churros con chocolate cafe just behind Puerto del Sol, is that it’s a tourist trap. But it’s the best of the tourist traps, or so says the professorial fellow in front of me, talking to the much younger woman by his side. So (he also says) when Hillary came no one had the nerve to tell her that she wasn’t supposed to dip the churros in the chocolate rather than drink the chocolate then nibble on the fried dough.

A Man and a Dog

Great Island, Cape Cod, and great sympathy for the man who never wanted a little white dog. . . .

The Cape: Into this Beauty, Peace (Into this peace, beauty)

 

Which came first, the beauty or the peace?