I am in Rouen, in Upper Normandy to gaze at the Notre Dame de Rouen. This cathedral is one of several named Notre Dames built around the same period in the 12th century. The Cathedral was made famous at one time because Claude Monet painted canvases using its facade as subject, in various seasons and times of the day. (Monet is in fact honored in the local museum as well as within the city). This Notre Dame is also an example of High Gothic architecture but with several additions of Renaissance and Baroque. The rains made it difficult for me to get a decent shot of the famous exterior and its interior does not have the same radiance as the rose windows of Notre Dame de Paris. I am waiting for a clearer sky tomorrow.
Back in Paris I often thought of its Notre Dame as a metaphor of my experiences here. Like its structure that was built over several decades, my sojourn is also likewise constructed by different layers of episodes and days. Some days are insightful and some are really dull and even bad.
Yet a person's existence can be compared to a cathedral. The core of the person is a complex cluster of memories of experiences that are held to be holy and sacred, and even inviolable. These memories are locked into small tokens, sacramentals which can activate the ideas within by means of ritual. The collection of these objects form the sacred space of the individual. This is kept in the holy of holies, in a vault, in a crypt, far from the prying eyes of the uninitiated. Through time the exterior of the person is built around these complexes, and the structure is made of temporal unities, not spatial elements. But in a cathedral, the stones are erected to greater heights. Thus a person is constructed.
But like Rouen this cathedral can be struck down by lightning and by bombs and by assaults of the revolution: the structure can fall. It can also crumble and fade, and be dissolved by acid rain. The person is the construct: it is the consciousness of being that lies beyond destruction. But this experience - the spoke of all wheels of epiphanies and experiences - is cultivated, not given. Sometimes this center of experience-less being is the reason why I work. It can only be uncovered, and discovered by total immersion in a path. And my path is artistic creation, my passage is the connection to the freedom of that child, that magical innocence sans the guilt of sin and the fear of censorship. If that center is there, then a cathedral can be rebuilt, several times over and even improved little by little, again and again. Only to be subjected to another round of destruction.
And so I now understand why I am keen on seeing these Notre Dames, these basiliques, these eglises. My life is seeking its proper metaphor.
Back in Paris I often thought of its Notre Dame as a metaphor of my experiences here. Like its structure that was built over several decades, my sojourn is also likewise constructed by different layers of episodes and days. Some days are insightful and some are really dull and even bad.
Yet a person's existence can be compared to a cathedral. The core of the person is a complex cluster of memories of experiences that are held to be holy and sacred, and even inviolable. These memories are locked into small tokens, sacramentals which can activate the ideas within by means of ritual. The collection of these objects form the sacred space of the individual. This is kept in the holy of holies, in a vault, in a crypt, far from the prying eyes of the uninitiated. Through time the exterior of the person is built around these complexes, and the structure is made of temporal unities, not spatial elements. But in a cathedral, the stones are erected to greater heights. Thus a person is constructed.
But like Rouen this cathedral can be struck down by lightning and by bombs and by assaults of the revolution: the structure can fall. It can also crumble and fade, and be dissolved by acid rain. The person is the construct: it is the consciousness of being that lies beyond destruction. But this experience - the spoke of all wheels of epiphanies and experiences - is cultivated, not given. Sometimes this center of experience-less being is the reason why I work. It can only be uncovered, and discovered by total immersion in a path. And my path is artistic creation, my passage is the connection to the freedom of that child, that magical innocence sans the guilt of sin and the fear of censorship. If that center is there, then a cathedral can be rebuilt, several times over and even improved little by little, again and again. Only to be subjected to another round of destruction.
And so I now understand why I am keen on seeing these Notre Dames, these basiliques, these eglises. My life is seeking its proper metaphor.
Notre Dame de Rouen
Rouen cathedral by Claude Monet.
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