IT ALL STARTED HERE
Over the New Year Period, I was in Portugal. As I usually always travel alone, this leaves me time to reflect and sometimes write notes. The text that you will discover below, some may have read, others not. A very good friend in Australia after reading this text, suggested that I should start a blog on the discoveries I make along the line.
Too much hard work!
Then today I went to an exhibition at the Cartier Fondation in Paris which rocked me. "Mathematics, A Beautiful Elsewhere" It "branded me" and made me very excited. I need now to set down my thoughts and perhaps in a blog share them with friends?
What is important is setting these thoughts down.
Perhaps it will be a trip? An exhibition? A concert?
But now I want to write about what I see and share it.
So will you join me in my discoveries ?
First of all - try understand doing "Nothing".......
31st December 2011-7th January 2012
ON DOING NOTHING
Those of you who know me will find it hard to believe that I have just had a week of doing «nothing». To the extent of thinking about and writing a text on this new concept.
2011 was not a year which I will remember with any pleasure, except I did see over 60 exhibitions, 40 films and not to mention concerts, a wonderful trip to Venise with Jerome and Laurent at the end of August for the Biennale, 48 hours in London with Pierrette in November and of course memorable moments with close friends. Despite the horrors of what I was going through - I was not doing «nothing».
The end of the year, the song and dance of Christmas shopping and trying to be happy, happy for the New Year were moments I enjoyed with Mother immensely. This year my objective was to go away for a week: sun, beach and quiet. Easy? Well there was one place that came up and that was the Algarve. How many of you know where that is - it’s the southern part of Portugal and the closest town was Albuferia arriving in Faro. And on the Atlantic. The hotel I had selected and asked Pierrette (my sister-in-law) to look at it, did not meet her approval and she came back with another one - and far nicer. The name of the town was not on the map, Praia de Galé, but we knew it was close to the sea. First objective achieved and it would obviously be quiet.
The car was waiting for me at Faro - and...an hour later we were in front of a very nice small hotel - with the most beautiful gum tree to boot.
But upon entering my hotel room I knew this was freezing point! The young manager admitted that yes, it was cold but with the key in the door to start off the lighting system, I could put the heating on. Forcing it to 28°, an hour later there was something called heat but not too much....so out to look around the hotel.
Remember, this is New Year’s Eve and the hotel is not exactly humming. Looking at the menu, the six proposed courses were far too much for me. The cook with a very disapproving look, said I could choose. The other four hotel guests spent the same time eating their six courses as I did my two. But, then I had my book as company and had indulged in a glass of champagne.
With an hours difference and back to my room at 10-30, I waited for the heating to work again. ‘Phoned my daughter Nicky at 11and then the bliss of a steaming hot bath before leaping into a bed which had now been decked with a duck down duvet and would be warmer than the initial sheet. To sleep, in anticipation of discovery on the 1st of January. Some hours later there was a bang at my door and I rushed to open it. Apparently, not a bang at all but the end of the fireworks, which I was told at breakfast were very small and uneventful due to the financial crisis.
Jumping out of bed and rocked that I had actually slept until 9am my time (8 locally). «Maggie, well really, you never do that». Rush, rush. I was going to be late? For what? I don’t know. But a dash down to breakfast to find a rather sleepy young man who fluttered around me like a butterfly. «No eggs, no fully cooked breakfast? Only fruit and yoghurt?» Who was this lady? Naturally I was the first and the only one at breakfast.
Before going off to discover the beach, I discovered the Spa. It would be opened at 3pm until 8 on the 1st of January. With price list in hand, I would make my choice. Now, and at 10am, it was time to be out...I had not hung around!
200 metres down the road I discovered the beach .
I gasped. This was a picture I had not experienced in years and to be so alone....There were stairs down to the beach. The question was, would I take off my walking shoes or not? I decided not. Mother used to say to me «beware Maggie, just because the sun is out, does not mean that it is hot» I listened to her wise words....
There was a sign on the parking lot (empty) that the walk along the beach was 16 kilometres. Where to where is another matter. After the white buildings in the distance, there was a point and I guess that after that - the beach went on. I started out. The rocks on the left, an hour after I had started walking brought up wonderful memories of the beach in Tasmania. I am sure my brother Michael would agree with me.
I had not stopped walking and at a very hearty pace. Some people were around in front of all those white buidlings. But where was I? We were just over 2 hours and a bit down the beach and my legs were feeling a little strained. Walking on hard sand is not easy when you are not used to it. So I started heading up to the township (?)
The contrast of the Portuguese and the tourists was hilarious. The ladies, all dressed up in black stockings, fur coats, hats and the tourists (they had to be Brits or northerners) were in shorts, sandals and alarminginly pink and not slender.
I wandered around the village. A few cafés were open but nothing appealed to me, so back to the beach.
You never perhaps had to take a Sunday walk as a child? Something you were pushed into? When I was first in Paris, my step father, Roger and Mother went off after lunch on the Sunday afternoon - all dressed up - Mother looking as if she was going to strangle Roger rather than enjoy her walk. There were a lot of Portuguese on the beach in their best Sunday clothes looking quite out of place as they strolled (?) along the hard sand. People were out now but not the crowds which one would expect in Summer. I strolled back at a steady pace and was at the hotel by 4. After a little snooze next to the swimming pool, it was Jacuzzi and Sauna time. My large and enlarging team of medical doctors and Pr. had threated me with side effects not to be spoken about if I ventured into a sauna. I survived very well - but then of course, 20 minutes in the Jacuzzi - alone - and two ten minutes stops in the sauna were not overdoing it....
Of course by now I was hungry so down to dinner at 8pm with my appointment card in hand for the following days at the Spa. Oh dinner was good and «Limonov» my book, a rather wild companion but a fascinating dinner mate which could not be said of the couple eating at another table. They did not exchange a word in the hour they were eating.
The navette was to take me to Albufeira the following morning at 9-30. Rush, rush.....why do I run as if late for a train? But there I was at 9-15 waiting outside in the sun for the bus to arrive.
Swinging Albufeira is one of those coastal Mediterranean towns which everyone has visited somewhere on a beach. All the shops look the same and there were no typical cafés or brasseries that I would liked to have gone into. So after a ten minute walk around the so called shopping centre, I headed for the heights and discovered the view on the left.
A sleepy township with one point of interest. S. Sebastian Chapel which is also the Museum of Sacred Art. I came back especially to see the Chapel two days later as it was not open on the Monday. S. Vincente of Alburfiera was a colourful saint. He was from a bourgeois family but in 1617 «in the middle of a happy and joyous life, he felt the calling of god and became a priest.» The following year he left for Japan as a missionary at a time when the Christians were fiercely prosecuted. He disguised himself as a peddler, dressed like a Japanese and preached the word of god to Portuguese and Japanesese christians. He was of course denounced and sent to prison. I had never heard of a European priest taking off for Japan. The documents were fascinating. As was the chapel. Even more enchanting, the caretaker who looked as if he had come out of a Renaissance picture, lit up the chapel for me
and - suddenly «Hark the herald, angels sing....» boomed out. It was touching. Very much so.
All the artifacts were in wood or ceramic, kitch, baroque or practically modern.
Examples of 16th and17th century art which I found enchanting. As «Silent Night» now rang in my ears - I left the little Chapel. This was my «cultural experience for the week.
On my first visit to this swinging township, I set out to look for a letter-box which I never found, nor on the 2nd . I gave a few chewed up looking postcards to the driver on my way back to the hotel at 1-30.
Straight off to the beach again. This time I would read, eat my fruit and reflect on the world. I chose a space where I could watch the waves - and went to sleep.
Now I was ready to take off my jumper and perhaps dare to paddle in that water? The waves, although fantstic to watch from a distance, where quite frightening. I would not want to swim in such waters....but paddling? From then on, so day 2, my shoes came off as soon as I touched the sand. Jeans were rolled up but coat and jumper normally stayed on.
Apart from the surfers and one man of my age, no-one ventured into that water. colder in Tasmania?
Jacuzzi, sauna, physiotherapy and a few beauty treatments for the week. So you can see how the days went by. On Tuesday however, I texted Nicky half way along the beach, wondering if I would actually get to the little village. I was definitely slowing down. The first day the walk had taken - a little over four hours. The second venture took very much longer and reading stops along the way. But it was not difficult to stop at a place like this on the right. A rock for my back, waves to look at and birds of all kinds screaching overhead.
There was of course the labrador sufer. We were three to watch him enjoy the waves...but to get him out of the water...his poor master, after a good five minutes of whistling and yelling, finally coaxed him out with a very big bone.....
Also, those tiny little birds dashing down following a wave on its way out and then rushing back as the another wave crashed to the shore and chased them back to their resting place. This little game seemed to go on for a long time, as my feet were a better shade of purple when I decided to move on.
I was back in the hotel at the end of the afternoon and by Friday everything seemed to become low motion. Apart from the staff, the only person I «spoke» to during that week was Nicky by text. We followed one another’s adventures regularly.
My week had come to an end. I was returning to Paris with a very sore throat, freckles, and had had slowed down. The food had been brillant; the Spa an indulgence but such an enjoyable one. «Limonov» was finished and I had re-read «Views from the Balcony» - my brother’s biography on our Mother, Catherine Duncan- and that had given me many hours of reflection. But surprisingly not on the past. More of a reflexion on people. At the end of the day I had set down notes, soaked myself in a steaming bath and started a third book. If anything the week had been one of reflection, thinking about friends, family, those who counted....and why. No projects planned and no resolutions made. And no T.V. As I was deprived of Wifi in my room, I contented myself with Scrabble on the Ipad, a few card games, jotting down notes and my books.
When I went down to the Spa on the Saturday morning to say goodbye and thank you. They had seen me without my hair so knew the situation.... the Manager said to me «you smile everyday, so just keep on smiling»...now that is the best bit of councel I have had in a long time.
Maggie - January 2012
And this week, I will be talking about the relationship between Mathmatematics and art....beauty...as I see it.
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