Writing and Photo Art
© Julie M. Moran, 2001, 2002

Saturday, June 03, 2000 11:09

This is my first trip in France into an older way, a country trip north. The train is a diesel type, clearly an old train too ... it is really shaking about, the engine rumbling. I'm watching the beloved Rouen cathedral fade long in the distance, out of site.

Arriving to a billowing late afternoon, Amiens at first blush appeared to be a goofy choice for a stop. There was some silly festival going on, lots of hubbub, a blaring microphone, shards of paper and garbage everywhere, and that steady "Euro-Techno Beat" stuff blaring too, booming up from a square just beyond where the taxi has deposited me. Kids were noisily playing some kind of street hockey tournament, right there in the street for screaming fans – and fortuitously, crowded round the front steps of my hotel.

Iit had a promising, almost boisterous name: Grand Hôtel de l'Univers. Inside, though, this old Victorian-like place has a desolate hush about it.

I get a short greeting and a small description of the hotel, which actually seems to evoke a sort of Euro-Wild West feeling. A long maroon-carpeted stairway leads to a large oval shaped catwalk landing. My room is around to the other side. There is no one about.

I plop down my bags and exit back outside to the din of this fête étrange. It seems so odd that everyone seems mildly entertained, yet I can't exactly figure out at all what they are doing, or why.

Through the town square, and now, everything is quiet again. I stop to ask two men where I can buy film. The late afternoon sun reveals the creases of uncertainty on their faces. I should look around, I am told simply

Ok, so I meander back to the Notre Dame Cathedral, actually the highest in France, the main reason I came to Amiens. The cathedrals I've seen so far are so big, yet they are typically shoe-horned into little squares. And so rarely does one get a lot of choices as to where to take outside photographs – even that straight-on type photo any tourist begins with is often difficult or impossible to get.

Well, there were no crowds, few tourists, and no photographers when these magnificent buildings were created in the mists of time long past. Here, now, I find a small, cobblestone area about the cathedrals now quiet, enormous stone front. I just went up, and took one horizontal and one vertical with my wide-angle lens. I put the camera down at my side. That was it.

Then ...

I began looking at the carvings. Hundreds of them, great men and little angels, stacked atop one other. Every square inch of door space, and nearly all of the exterior surfaces, are completely covered with them. As always, the demons, gargoyles, menacing little imaginary creatures protect the entrances and the walls from the phantom devils lurking outside, looking, jutting outward in every direction ...

I looked at the arches that braced the columns, balanced and curving upward in flight -- how did the builders so long ago know why, how and where to strategically place them? The front facades were adorned with the front rose, carved in petal curves gently hovering in the air, with side pieces flowing around from one pier to the next.

As the sun began drooping orang-y, softly lower, the hard white stone turned milky and sweet, a softer, creamsicle light on the newly cleaned front face (I later learned the entire building was recently cleaned with dirt agitating pulsating lasers – wish I had those for my kitchen floor!).

I went inside.

Immediately one succumbs to the fantastic immensity ... deep, dark, cold, mysterious.

The great, magnificent height of the ceiling, 139 feet up, elicits a gasp at the first look. What a building! You can't believe that such a thing could have been built in the 1100's (the towers weren't crowned until the 1400s – quite lazy of them, wouldn't you say?). There were ornate columns, sculptures and sepulchers, incredibly ornate wrought iron floor mausoleums, ornate gold chapel gates, enormous, greatly detailed carved pulpits, lovely paintings both big and small. It was an absolutely incredible sight.

The Cathedral was built quickly, in order to house the head of THE John the Baptist, a prized relic brought back from the Fourth Crusade in 1206 by Wallon de Sarton, Canon of Picquigny – which was very swell of him to do, and of course what a lucky find! And there, indeed, in one little pocket of the Chancel, there -- behind glass and in its own little gold brace -- was the baptized remains of John's noggin, preserved for us for all time ...

This was a chance for me to catch up on the beauty of very old great architectural works, typically religious, and really look at the technical and not just the artistic greatness of mankind that existed long before the printing press, steel making, the curing of viruses and infections, the invention of the telephone and the gasoline engine, deployment of electricity, lighting and utilities, microprocessors and the Internet ...

... the human mind was great, long before that, even in the development of reasoning, language and the arts – and even in the ways of conducting business affairs. How alone am I, with my earlier prevailing notion, "how ignorant people were back then" ...

These chambers are the vaults that cover and hold a testament to mankind's eternal wisdom. Or, at least, as eternal as eternal can be, given our short lives here ... and given all these fantastic, miraculous builders of such a magnificent building, have been so long gone now ...

The greatness of human kind arises more from the basics of logic and language. Without indurate accomplishments here, without the power of evidence and strength of the categorization of human events and discoveries and milestones, the purpose of greater future good would be impossible.

Today, we know, the earth gives up little fecund ground for human monuments of this incredible size and delicate stature. Today, the tremendous engines of greater learning are the modern facility of the invisible, as small as the atoms and molecules themselves. Like database management, where learning is more founded on filing and retrieving thus discovered important information faster; and of telecommunication and data switching, to relay accessed information cheaply across the world ...

Beyond the reach of humans, the universe is endless; we haven't access to it. It has infinite atoms, yet none at all. It is full of light, but not color; full of matter, yet empty as an airless, groundless breath.

Meandering thoughts end, and I'm back here, on the floor with God and Jesus. Heaven was elsewhere that day, but it might as well have been right there, blessed in that ephemeral, precious, soft light, toward the end of a blessed day.

And so I wandered out so greatly affected, leaving this most incredible place, and out in the quiet late-afternoon day unfolding. Ok, so now I'm getting to feel a little better about this little out-of-the-way Picardie place, Amiens! It was Thursday all the shops were closed because of the Ascension Day holiday, I guessed. And, after a few pictures of young kissers in the park (the jaune filles et garcons love to smooch in public in France!) I was finally out of film.

Now, back to different part of the old town, and down a narrow, tree-lined side street, where there were two places featuring a very respectable, hundred-plus beer brand list close by (even on holidays the brasseries, cafes, tabacs, taverns, pubs and restaurants are the only types of retail businesses that don't close).

Picking one, I plopped down by a particularly nice table by a shady tree, ordering (quite appropriately) an "Arbre d'Or" – a Golden Tree ale. The French love their wine, but they still respect the Belgeçois for their expertise in making fortified artisanal beer. In particular, this is the land of the French country beers, made not far away from Picardie – these "Walloon" brewers have their own special of strong and demi-strong beers, with their own special musty, cellar-y character ...

Ok, enough about beer now – my main point was that this Golden Tree beer was very lovely, returning the pink to my face and a warming to the heart! Requesting La Carte Nourriture (pronounced to perfection, I assure you!), a beautiful Fruits de Mer salad was forth coming, and with it a Chimay Bleue . . . perfect, perfect and again, perfect!

I'm so glad I came to Europe this Summer 2000, despite the additional tourists. The out-of-the-way towns are not overly crowded anyway, excepting Paris. There is so much more light in the day to do and see things ...

... and here now, having spent more than an hour in the cathedral and another hour or so having a lovely dinner in a quaint café outdoors on a tree-lines side street ... and I began to wander more still. The light was so milky, soft upon the whitish sandstone buildings, lovingly touched with little sculptures, scrolls and ornate roof balustrades and window sills.

And then you discover one little magical place after the next ... a school courtyard here, a tree-lined boulevard there ... the Musèe de Picardie (the region of France in which Amiens is located), which I wouldn't get to see for lack of time ... and the comically circular Circus building and its street-side parks leading from it.

Now here, a main boulevard, which I followed along thereon to street after street of lovely row houses, all decorated and adorned in a million different ways ... and as the sun set further, I couldn't resist peering carefully into the little condominiums, trying to find whatever how these people lived in their mysterious row homes ... then back down the hill, finding myself back at the rail station where my Amiens experience began.

Across the street the stately Hotel Carlton beckoned, with its ornate lamps and other decorative touches, all put together in a grand old building. And so I had me some of Europe's finest steamed café coffee (it always is – the right way to do coffee, not out of a plate-hot glass carafe!) and frothy and lovely bittersweet taste was perfect ... joined with pear sorbet, drenched in pear liquor. A petit repast fit for a queen!

Well, there you have it, my rather short but surprisingly amazing and lovely visit to Amiens! Go, see it for yourself.

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This photo's link will take you to a very insightful Amiens Project Web Site Sponsored by Columbia University. Be sure to check it out! I've selected a hanful of my own favorite photo images below. As with all my web pages, each photo contains site links to provide additional information --- and much, much more spectacular photos of this magnificent place.

Be sure to check out this web site! These computer renderings are sampled from "The Amiens Cathedral" video available from Crystal Productions (Glenview, IL), and is for sale in the Columbia University Book Store, New York City.

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