…TO BEAUTY…

Stage 24 / Wednesday 20 May / From Rocamadour to Labastide-Murat / 26 km

 

Leaving Rocamadour toward the south, I look back to admire again the sumptuous cliff where chateaus dominate the sanctuaries overhanging the medieval houses. The soaring height of this place shines with beauty in its picturesque vertical, and from far off it resembles a gigantic post card. I pause again for a long moment to appreciate this legendary splendor tucked between the blue-pink of the morning sky and the grey-green of the Alzou valley. Closer to me, the drops of dew sparkle as the sun lifts itself to illuminate the scene. These pearls give the tableau a unique and enchanting easel!

 

Ah, beauty here accessible, pure and free, given to me as a gift to justify the fatigue of my long stage yesterday and this detour freely chosen! In the sanctuary, I felt myself led to say thank-you for escaping safely from my earlier slipping accident on the steep descent. This morning, an interior breath of gratitude rises again in me before the visual enchantment that is given to me. This beauty that touches me is like an unreal presence that secretly consents being given to me. The unity between my being and this absolute, facing it, is truly real: I feel from it a beneficent purpose, a disarming sense of esthetics and an immense feeling of purity.

 

I feel the call to drown myself in this beauty, as if I could not have any fear of communing with it. It’s as though I were a bud that suddenly wants to expand and rejoice in the light and warmth of the day, revealing thus the petals of an incomparable flower. I shiver with well-being, savoring the intensity of my feelings, fully accessible to the wave of peaceful joy that envelops me.

 

The bleating and jingling of an approaching flock of sheep, accompanied by a shepherd whistling on his bicycle, awaken me from my numbing torpor, and I resume walking. Here I am reflecting on what moves me in beauty, an impalpable thing which can be expressed in so many ways from one individual to another: the beauty of panoramas and wide-open spaces for one, jewelry and fine watch-making for the other, classical works of art for one, modern dance for another, Swan Lake or Béjart, etc.

 

Is it really an exterior appeal that moves you thus, each one in a different way, or is it the individual who decides from the depths of his interior what is beautiful? Does one receive beauty, or on the contrary is it we who project it? What might be grandiose to one person can seem quite banal to another. But the effect that is produced by the impact of that which is beautiful is no doubt more comparable from one person to another: a being struck, a new serenity, an instinctive adoption, and an adhesion!

 

I also notice how many elements are needed in a scenic beauty to assemble a whole which delights me, and how I cannot decide what can be removed without diminishing the intensity. Multiple and one at the same time, my companion Beauty, when she shows herself without warning, never ceases to surprise me and give me again the taste for existence. Now this is no longer the postcard Rocamadour, but it’s the old windmill in Carlucet which rises up behind a hedge. Further on it’s a ewe with gentle black eyes nursing with love her darling impatient lamb.

 

It came, it’s the word “love” that came to me surreptitiously as I was only trying to decipher “beauty”: as if the language of beauty was inviting me to see a manifestation of affection coming from those greater than oneself … or perhaps on the contrary surging from a tiny innermost part of myself bearing such a treasure box which asks only to be opened! I start rhyming again: “Handsome … pure love … please do come … from up above!”