Fountain 21. Place d l'Abbaye, Le Chaise-Dieu. 4 August

  Dore-L'Eglise

 c. 15th-16th Century stone cross depicting baby Jesus swaddled and patient in anticipation

 of his ultimate crucifixion thirty-some years down the line.

 

I have never seen this iconography on any of the hundreds of French stone crosses that I have encountered in my travels. This obvious juxtaposition of innocence and vulnerability is so tender.
However we always remain vulnerable and ultimately perishable.
So what happens to our innocence?
Do we actually lose it as if it were a purse full of credit cards?
Or do we mislay it and put something else in its place. Like fear.



 I am always moved by paintings or music completed just before the creator expired. Such as Mozart's Requiem Mass or Chagall's final lithograph, completed the night before he died in 1985.
 It shows a painter at the easel with an angel descending with open arms. I suppose at aged 98 one
 can assume the end is getting closer with each breath, but the strength of this work does not give
the impression one might expect from its chronology.
Yet, perhaps knowing that, we are invited to read into the picture and develop its symbolism further. Could those be the soul's wings on the artist back?
Is the woman on the easel offering the painter flowers from beyond the canvas?
I have grown to love Chagall because he is not afraid to paint the poetic and lyrical nature of his spirituality.

 

                                              'Towards Another Light' by March Chagall

                                                       

                       
                                  The Fountain in the Place d' l Abbaye, Le Chaise Dieu
                                      Eau non potable which has been a very rare event.

Le Chaise-Dieu, God's Chair, is set on a high butte of 1082 m.  

It was very quiet. As if all the motorbikes and cars were floating in a dream.

 Even the five muddied young men in matching blue leathers roared and wheelied 

their KTMs in a muffled, head stuffed in cotton wool sort of way.

                                                      
                                                Grave marker from the floor of the Abbaye

I must confess, that for years I have owed much of my petrol station confidence to a television advert
 and Side Show Bob. 

After having put diesel in an petrol car and petrol in a diesel car, embarrassingly and expensively more than once, I now pause,
and recall an advert reminding the owner that their very clean and quiet car had a diesel engine.

The word "die" was written in unexpected places leading us to perceive a sinister threat.  However, as the car owner refuels the car we realise it is only to act as an aide memoire.
Then I remember Side Show Bob's trial on The Simpson's.

Blue-Haired Lawyer: What about that tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say "DIE BART DIE"?

Sideshow Bob: No, that's German

[unveils tattoo]

Sideshow Bob: for 'THE BART THE'.

Woman on Parole Board: No one who speaks German could be an evil man.

Funny how one's brain works.