…DOES INTROSPECTION…

Stage 3 / Wednesday 29 avril / From Arzay to Hauterives / 25 km

 

“Crying roof and laughing roof”: the double-sloped roofing style is typical in the Dauphiné; it unites the Western rectilinear slope which weeps toward the ground, and the Asian one which rises to smile at the sky! In the same way my walk brings together the feet’s effort stimulating my mental reflections, and in exchange the exercise of introspection makes me forget the fatigue of my legs. I laugh up at the angels rather than grimacing down at my feet!

 

Oh quietude of a walking dream sprinkled with distractions coming from the path, exercise able to liberate things buried, even leading to fantasy! What would life or love be without poetry! Instead of a cold analytical and structured approach (controlled “male” scientific approach) in the observation of my discoveries while walking, I delight instead in a warm emotive and quasi ecstatic awakening up to what is passing before me (artistic, emotive delight, more “feminine” and sometimes sending my head into a spin!). Paul Fort’s poem, Happiness [Le Bonheur], comes back to me: “Happiness is in the field…run quickly, run quickly… Happiness is in the field… run quickly before it gets away!” [Le bonheur est dans le pré … Cours y vite, cours y vite … Le bonheur est dans le pré … Cours y vite, il va filer ! ]

 

As I cross a street in a small town, I think of myself. Do I look like the Swiss explorer Picard, who took upon himself the risks of exploring the depths of the sea or the heights of the stratosphere? Or instead am I more like those middle-class folks who sit on the terrace of a café, to watch pilgrims and educated men of action pass by? Advance or sit comfortably in retirement? Struggle forward or retreat?

 

In any case, I know that in every journey I will eliminate the memories of discomfort in order to retain the enjoyable ones. And I also know that I’ll enjoy avoiding the real journey if that of a lecturer, with sounds and smells gathered elsewhere, can bring alive an unknown place. I like watching Thalassa on TV [a successful French travel program], and go to a country market to sniff the spices of another world. So if a particular program or story is enough to carry me afar, I become the parasite hanging onto the author, and I remain warm and cozy at home!

 

But what is that? Is it really an active “life” or just a passive “experience”? Insightfulness or consumerism? Truly living or second-hand existing? The impact of the book, of the performance, or screen truly shows its worth only when it manages transporting you away to distant places, is it not so?

 

Is it the same kind of feeling I have at mass when the worshipers’ fervor around me is more evident than my own? Are not my richest moments those where my daydreaming unravels a long sermon’s thread? Don’t these sermons only affect me in a subliminal way, through the logic of their moral inciting?

Nonetheless, I have accepted as much as possible, belatedly, to take them to heart, in order to try and lead a more upright life. So, here I am back on the path again, moving toward a goal, avoiding detours ... The effort of compassion, for example, requires taking the risk of going alongside others in suffering, ready to share their pain in the hope of perhaps lightening their load. A more virtuous way of living than doing it by proxy.

 

In Hauterives I rediscover the innocent and surreal world of the Ideal Palace built by Ferdinand Cheval, the postman (1836-1924). He knew how to live, in pushing his heavy wheel-barrows of cement, a life of superb imaginary travels which he made concrete after his postal runs. He made them real for the inhabitants of his town, leaving them a lasting monument, a forest of steles (stone pillars) worthy of Jacob’s Ladder, standing between heaven and the Drôme soil, inspired by ironic and mysterious insight!

The Ideal Palace in Hauterives