Pilgrimage between the seas

Where traditional pilgrims on the ancient Compestella routes visit cathedrals in order to be stunned by their hugeness or by tiny relics, pieces of saints or of their crosses, we visit a certain prison in Agen. Here are no relics that I know of, probably no saints either, only Helene who lives there as though in suspended animation while the wheels of French justice slowly grind out a decision about her ultimate sentence.  It was also rainy last year when we visited;  the walls themselves weep as we pass our own brief sentence waiting before an anonymous doorway with its buzzer button and small fisheye camera.  Visitors must spend a half-hour or so there for no apparent reason watching ordinary deliveries or else the odd prisoner with hands cuffed behind his back, joking with his captors, one of the cops firmly holding the chain between the handcuffs and then all three them disappearing into the court building just across the street.  Getting into the visitors' room meant going through about the same amount of security as at the airport.  This time I wasn't made to check my shoes and wear disgusting prison slippers.   Between the drive to Agen and back and the pre-visit waiting period,  about three hours are consumed.  The visit itself is a mere half hour and it goes very fast.  The guards are smiling and affable, like friends and I think they may have spotted us five or ten minutes extra.

Afterward, we decided to detour through Golfech and Moissac along the complex waterways of the Garonne and Tarn rivers, tracked by the Canal du Midi and a lateral canal all of which somehow connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea and are thus known as the Canal des deux mers.   We had seen the plumes of the cooling towers for years from miles around but never driven past.

At last, the end of our pilgrimage, once again we beheld the ancient abbey of Moissac.  (All the Abbey photos courtesy of Adrian Fletcher, http://www.paradoxplace.com)  

This tympanum is the best!  The god guy is such a psycho power monger that the row of little you's and me's underneath appear like from a dream of Laurel and Hardie, with their slightly-too-big heads, craning and the loving detail of the legs and laps, all different.

Here's the story of Lazerus, sick and starving, dying, a dog licking his sores as the rich neighbors refuse his pleas and continue pigging out.  Sound familiar?

 

Probably the most famous and incandescent of all the figures, the prophet Jeremiah:

1, rue St Roch

Hand made hemp cord lying on a sketch of the Castelfranc bastide (10), the Lot river (3), and the promontories, Pech des Fourches (4) and Pech du Vert (8(

It was a bad moment getting on the cattle car of a small jet on the first leg of the trip to Castelfranc, Burlington to Washington, DC. Ceilings so low many of us had to bend our necks. This added to my sense of unsteadyness brought on by Betsy, as I have named the non-malignant tumor on my ear nerve. To keep claustrophobic panic at bay, I immediately withdrew into an alternative ipod world. I was just getting into La-bas si j'y suis, my favorite French radio program, when the unsmiling flight attendant made me shut it off. I didn't think of objecting or even asking for a reason why. Or even bleating like a sheep.

It was still hard to get the incident at security: a young man standing in the designated footprints drawn on the floor with his arms outstretched like a Jesus in Abu Graib while he answered polite questions. All I could catch was, "Do you want to bring a witness?" He answered "No, that's ok" like he didn't want to cause them any further fuss. He was taken to the side and a hospital type screen was whipped around him. The rest of us all pretended it wasn't happening.

In any case, it seem uncivilized to ignore the woman sitting next to me even though she was occupied weaving a basket. She was an ethnobotanist working in Vermont for a California organization of some kind and on her way to see her bosses at the mother ship. She had a thick photo album of objects made with vegetation, gourds, and especially baskets many of which were in museums. She showed me how to braid cordage by taking the rightmost of three strands, twisting the hemp fibers to the right, then winding that same twisted piece to the left. I think. The result is that when you let go of the braid, it doesnt tend to unwind. She uses basket weaving to teach prisoners in South Burlington about geometry and arithmetic. She says it requires three P's: perseverence, patience, practice. Soon the landing was announced and the woman noted that I had probably had the most pleasant 2 hours of the trip in spite of my looming claustraphobia. She was right.