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Building the Tower : pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.
July 1In my silence and withdrawal, the other vision has been developing, becoming more real …A tower. A tower made with my own hands, whose walls connect the inside and outside: filtering, refining, intensifying what is outside inward; amplifying and radiating what is inside out. A tower whose anticlockwise winding steps I climb to the…
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Return to La Balme: ‘Cycling the Green Meridian’, Day 20
Day 20: Albi to Coupiac, 56 miles. Return to the hills. Our village revealed. The carved stone buried. Encounter in the café. The wild boy reconsidered. Our house. The one-armed man. The Virgin’s veil. The threshing-machine. Camping by the lake. Pot au feu with the young couple. I wake early. Today I will be at…
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Return to Albi: Cycling the Green Meridian, Day 19.
Day 19: Belcastel to Albi, 51miles. The first smile of the South. Dante and tripe. ‘Benveguda en Tarn’. Pink city. Crusade against Christians. A congregation facing hell. The great explorer lost. Diagonals of the Hexagon. The garden restaurant. Burger à point. It is another cold night and I hardly sleep. I’m up, packed and ready…
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Leonard Cohen at the Opera House, Manchester, Tues, 17 June, 2008
Dark stage, brightly lit at the back – I expect a Manhattan skyline. The band take their places. LC quickly follows, there’s no spinning it out, he’s right on time, getting to business. He bounds on, he’s up for it, dapper in a suit and fedora, both grey, a double-breasted suit, wide trousers, grey shirt…
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Cycling the Green Meridian: Day 10
3am thoughts. The savage river dreams. Norse pirates. Theodulph’s oratory. The saint at the abbey. The Apocalypse. The first heretics burned at Orléans. Joan of Arc and visions. Max Jacob. The failure of la Méridienne verte, the success of letterboxes. 3 a.m. Writing, in the cold, unfamiliar light of my new, illuminating pen. The third…
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Cycling the Green Meridian: 7
Day 7: St-Ouen to Fleury-Mérogis, 53 miles. The flea market. Reuniting two lovers. Suzanne’s grave. A hectic ride across Paris. Satie’s flat. The undertaker. Erik’s grave. Cultural tourism. Gabrielle. The bell not pressed. Depression in a metal cell. I eat breakfast in the bar. Bright sun outside, washed streets, deep shadows, few people. A bar…
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Cycling the Green Meridian: 6
Day 6: Villers-St-Sépulchre to St-Ouen, 46 miles. On the Move. The Jacquerie. The Republic and laïcité. Nerval. Chantilly. Questing Quixotes. Heat exhaustion. Madame le Maire. My guardian angel of St-Denis. Abbot Suger and the birth of Gothic. Class and race. Ricqlès in St-Ouen. I set off early, glad to be on the road. I slept…
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A Walk across, Paris along the Meridian : 4
I walk down towards Pigalle. Cheap, grim hotels. Graffiti, ‘CHA CHA I HEART YOU’, many times, obsessively, I remember someone we knew in London, fixated on a call girl associated with a politician, fired shots through her door, blew up a scandal. Walking in front of me an oriental woman in black wide-brimmed hat, leopardskin…
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