Week Nine: The balikbayan box week
It seems that a theme has emerged from this weeks events and I call it "on the manner of sending home a balikbayan box". After so many days I am on my final month in Paris and I have taken the services of a Filipino-owned courier in Paris (courtesy of a referral from France-based painter Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi) and bought myself an 85kg balikbayan box that I can fill up to the rim. In seven days I've managed to purchase all sorts of art materials, books and some items such as kitchen knives and rheumatism pads - from all kinds of stores in Paris. I even sent home my works on paper, sealed up in a tube and all my sketchbooks, journals and my highly prized Swiss made carving tools, plus some wood blocks.
Even as I pack these objects into my box I also fashioned a mental "balikbayan box" where I could organize my impressions of my brief residency, which I can "open" at certain days in the future. The Renaissance writers called this psychic mechanism a "Memory Palace", a concept mentioned by Thomas Harris as being employed by his fictional genius-madman, Hannibal Lecter. I could not imagine how a palace looks like before I went to Paris, but with so many examples here in this city, I can even construct my own mental Louvre...a sort of museum of mental objects that is not certainly mentally challenged in its proposition. No, better call it a museum of recollected perceptions, or a Louvre of episodic memory.
The week started with a round of conclusion: having visited Sainte-Chapelle and seeing its former treasures in the Tresor of Notre Dame, I have ticked off the very last Paris church on my list. I have only three museums left to visit and one more Cathedral, the Notre Dame de Chartres. My wife and I went back to Saint-Etienne du Mont to touch the tomb of Ste-Genevieve and we both swore we felt some presence in that object. And as have visited many cemeteries and have touched many tombs here, this one has a special resonance...yet I was surprised to read later on that the body of this patron saint of Paris was desecrated and scattered during the Revolution and only a fragment of her corpus has been preserved. But the tomb was identified and authenticated and is now encased in a glass and metal framework, in a chapel at the west of the altar. A picture of the late John Paul II, kneeling in front of the tomb is laminated and featured at the kneeler where he did so.
Perhaps it is only a Filipino (read: Catholic) who would demand an intuitive experience, an aura so to speak from holy places. My wife and I agree that somehow most churches in Paris do not have this aura. The Madeleine, for instance, even for its grandiose scale and interiors did not draw wonder from us. I even said it looks like Arellano's Manila Post Office building on Liwasang Bonifacio and no matter how it radically looks different inside, there is nothing but a curious askance that took hold in my mind. Theatrical somehow is the impression that I make of it: and this is my third time to visit.
In the course of running around the city to buy stuff for my balikbayan box we also, by chance, found other churches and visited them: Eglise St-Ambroise, St-Louis in Les Invalides, St-Germaine near the Louvre and even the twin sister of Sainte-Chapelle in Chateau de Vincennes. Yet even these more modern churches, still in use, seem to have lost their ghosts. Which makes me ask: where are the ghosts in Paris? Where are the spirits of the massacred in the Louvre courtyard? Where are the shades of the Huguenots, killed in a church at the pretense of a wedding party? Where are do the crying voices of the expelled Jews of the last war echo? Where in Paris are the hiding places of souls?
And why, in the Lords name, are there more ghosts across the Channel, in England? Have they migrated there? Perhaps I will pay a visit to the grave of Spiritualist Alan Kardek for some answers...
After I have taped shut the loose lids of my box last Friday and was promptly picked up by Star Padala, I had a free Saturday to see Chateau de Vincennes, Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennces, Bois de Vincennes and La Defense. The old castle and keep where interesting, but we found the Flower Park of Paris nearby and the Lac de Mande more delightful for its community of noisy plovers, wary pigeons, boisterous geese and stately swans. We had dinner at a private home with some Filipinos who had lived in Europe for many decades and swapped stories of what has happened back home, and what has happened to them here. It was a lively private party that lasted well until midnight.
Taking advantage of the free entrance on first Sundays my wife and I went to the Louvre. Her request was simple: to see Mona Lisa. My purpose for this second visit was also straightforward: to see the French Neoclassicists. Passing through and elbowing against the masses of camera-totting tourists we made an aggressive approach towards La Gioconda, as the Mona Lisa is also known and we went to the adjacent hall of French academic paintings, from David to Ingres and to the Romantics Gericault and Delacroix. We took some token snapshots in front of Michelangelo's Slaves and exited to rue de Rivoli to take the Metro to Musee de Cluny. We did not linger at Cluny, though, and went back to Cité for lunch. The weather report said there will be snow showers in the evenings, as the thermometer registers a constant low of -1 celsius. Today and last night I had to wear three layers of clothing, most of which I bought in Paris because the ones I brought did not help and I shipped them back home, along with oversized jeans (walking here had trimmed my waistline a bit, so it seems).
At La Defense yesterday we found a Christmas bazaar in front of Grande Arche and discovered bargains (made in China) and warm sandwiches of ham and melted cheese. I checked out the Apple Store at Le Quatre Temps, a mall, and took note of the price of the Ipad Mini, but I decided to postpone my wishful purchases of Apple products for my next residency in New York next year.
So at the end of the week I wondered what else should I pack along? My days are focused on slowly letting go of Paris and the end of my residency. Filipinos, they say, are so enamored of long, overdrawn goodbyes. My farewell starts today - a month long, ceremonious, ritualized au revoir!
It seems that a theme has emerged from this weeks events and I call it "on the manner of sending home a balikbayan box". After so many days I am on my final month in Paris and I have taken the services of a Filipino-owned courier in Paris (courtesy of a referral from France-based painter Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi) and bought myself an 85kg balikbayan box that I can fill up to the rim. In seven days I've managed to purchase all sorts of art materials, books and some items such as kitchen knives and rheumatism pads - from all kinds of stores in Paris. I even sent home my works on paper, sealed up in a tube and all my sketchbooks, journals and my highly prized Swiss made carving tools, plus some wood blocks.
Even as I pack these objects into my box I also fashioned a mental "balikbayan box" where I could organize my impressions of my brief residency, which I can "open" at certain days in the future. The Renaissance writers called this psychic mechanism a "Memory Palace", a concept mentioned by Thomas Harris as being employed by his fictional genius-madman, Hannibal Lecter. I could not imagine how a palace looks like before I went to Paris, but with so many examples here in this city, I can even construct my own mental Louvre...a sort of museum of mental objects that is not certainly mentally challenged in its proposition. No, better call it a museum of recollected perceptions, or a Louvre of episodic memory.
The week started with a round of conclusion: having visited Sainte-Chapelle and seeing its former treasures in the Tresor of Notre Dame, I have ticked off the very last Paris church on my list. I have only three museums left to visit and one more Cathedral, the Notre Dame de Chartres. My wife and I went back to Saint-Etienne du Mont to touch the tomb of Ste-Genevieve and we both swore we felt some presence in that object. And as have visited many cemeteries and have touched many tombs here, this one has a special resonance...yet I was surprised to read later on that the body of this patron saint of Paris was desecrated and scattered during the Revolution and only a fragment of her corpus has been preserved. But the tomb was identified and authenticated and is now encased in a glass and metal framework, in a chapel at the west of the altar. A picture of the late John Paul II, kneeling in front of the tomb is laminated and featured at the kneeler where he did so.
Perhaps it is only a Filipino (read: Catholic) who would demand an intuitive experience, an aura so to speak from holy places. My wife and I agree that somehow most churches in Paris do not have this aura. The Madeleine, for instance, even for its grandiose scale and interiors did not draw wonder from us. I even said it looks like Arellano's Manila Post Office building on Liwasang Bonifacio and no matter how it radically looks different inside, there is nothing but a curious askance that took hold in my mind. Theatrical somehow is the impression that I make of it: and this is my third time to visit.
In the course of running around the city to buy stuff for my balikbayan box we also, by chance, found other churches and visited them: Eglise St-Ambroise, St-Louis in Les Invalides, St-Germaine near the Louvre and even the twin sister of Sainte-Chapelle in Chateau de Vincennes. Yet even these more modern churches, still in use, seem to have lost their ghosts. Which makes me ask: where are the ghosts in Paris? Where are the spirits of the massacred in the Louvre courtyard? Where are the shades of the Huguenots, killed in a church at the pretense of a wedding party? Where are do the crying voices of the expelled Jews of the last war echo? Where in Paris are the hiding places of souls?
And why, in the Lords name, are there more ghosts across the Channel, in England? Have they migrated there? Perhaps I will pay a visit to the grave of Spiritualist Alan Kardek for some answers...
After I have taped shut the loose lids of my box last Friday and was promptly picked up by Star Padala, I had a free Saturday to see Chateau de Vincennes, Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennces, Bois de Vincennes and La Defense. The old castle and keep where interesting, but we found the Flower Park of Paris nearby and the Lac de Mande more delightful for its community of noisy plovers, wary pigeons, boisterous geese and stately swans. We had dinner at a private home with some Filipinos who had lived in Europe for many decades and swapped stories of what has happened back home, and what has happened to them here. It was a lively private party that lasted well until midnight.
Taking advantage of the free entrance on first Sundays my wife and I went to the Louvre. Her request was simple: to see Mona Lisa. My purpose for this second visit was also straightforward: to see the French Neoclassicists. Passing through and elbowing against the masses of camera-totting tourists we made an aggressive approach towards La Gioconda, as the Mona Lisa is also known and we went to the adjacent hall of French academic paintings, from David to Ingres and to the Romantics Gericault and Delacroix. We took some token snapshots in front of Michelangelo's Slaves and exited to rue de Rivoli to take the Metro to Musee de Cluny. We did not linger at Cluny, though, and went back to Cité for lunch. The weather report said there will be snow showers in the evenings, as the thermometer registers a constant low of -1 celsius. Today and last night I had to wear three layers of clothing, most of which I bought in Paris because the ones I brought did not help and I shipped them back home, along with oversized jeans (walking here had trimmed my waistline a bit, so it seems).
At La Defense yesterday we found a Christmas bazaar in front of Grande Arche and discovered bargains (made in China) and warm sandwiches of ham and melted cheese. I checked out the Apple Store at Le Quatre Temps, a mall, and took note of the price of the Ipad Mini, but I decided to postpone my wishful purchases of Apple products for my next residency in New York next year.
So at the end of the week I wondered what else should I pack along? My days are focused on slowly letting go of Paris and the end of my residency. Filipinos, they say, are so enamored of long, overdrawn goodbyes. My farewell starts today - a month long, ceremonious, ritualized au revoir!
Reliquary of the Crown of Thorns at Notre Dame
At Sainte Chapelle
Sainte Chapelle
At Hotel de Ville
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