Arles
Dayle in Limoux – Day #58
September 1, 2022There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!”
-Vincent van Gogh
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He left Paris for the colors of Midi France, Provence, and Arles. The color is gorgeous. The first capture is the early morning light, and the second, from the previous evening. His yellow!
“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”
Walking around, following my iPhone map deep in the ancient, hidden, narrow and winding streets, there it was. Look familiar?
YES❗️
Le Café de Nuit/The Night Cafe
When I attended van Gogh Alive! last summer in Denver, I purchased a van Gogh yellow t-shirt with this image. One year later, I am here! Love how the Universe does that.
🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻 🌻
So happy and thrilled to live it! Couldn’t believe I was standing in his creativity. I sat down at one of the cafe tables and looked at his drink menu…
So I ordered his drink, L’absinthe van Gogh. I really really don’t care for anise-flavored spirits, yet, it’s van Gogh’s drink, like Hemingway! The drink of creatives. :)
It is served with lots of l’eau and some sugar to add as needed. Added almost all the l’eau and it wasn’t enough sugar.
🤢
I must not be a creative. So I ordered a [real] Coca-Cola.
Loved so much. Stayed a long while…didn’t want to leave! Yet, it was time to find the Arènes d’Arles, the Arles Amphitheatre. The ancient construction from the year 90 A.D.
Think gladiators and chariot races and 20,000 spectators. I re-watched Russell Crowe’s ‘Gladiator’ (one of my favorite films) before I travelled to Arles.
Touching 2,000 year old stone. Incredible. Took lots of pictures. Of rocks. :) Ancient stone, and vibrations, and energy. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with other Roman and medieval buildings in Arles, the Roman and Romanesque Monuments. Extraordinary. Roman ruins without traveling to Rome, only a 200 mile bus/train ride from Limoux.
The arena was inspired by the Colosseum in Rome, built in 72-80. The Arles arena hosted gladiators during four centuries.
Spending time there my mind kept traveling to those times, the violence and gore, the cruelty, the enslaved people…for sport…the animals that were brought up from below, like was depicted in the film. I could post about 50 photos. Here’s a few incredible captures.
A remarkable experience. I was there a long time, and at one point I was the only human in the arena. Truly profound. Apparently, bullfights continue there today.
So happy I traveled to see it, to experience it, van Gogh’s light (!), to walk the ancient Roman streets.
I stayed overnight in a small, quaint hotel, once an old museum called the Hôtel du Musée from the 1600’s. About a 12 minute walk from la gare, the train station. It’s right across from the Musée Réattu. Quite basic, small single rooms. Very clean. The best attraction is the proximity to many beloved attractions, like the Constantine Baths, The van Gogh Foundation, and the ancient arena. It’s just steps away from the the river Rhône. Left my large window very open as I slept because of the heat, and when I awoke, about 45 new mosquito bites. Pas bon. Even two on my face. That’s a first. Drag. Worth it!
In the morning, they serve a lovely little breakfast on their garden patio.
Then it was time to head back to the train station and make my connections for the return to Languedoc and Limoux.
Wonderful random art spotted next to the Arles train tracks. From the photo, it looks painted, but it’s actually thin wire tubing.
Van Gogh. Or as they say in France, van G O L F .
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mercimercimerci, for your your passion, your dreams, and your yellow.
Bonne nuit.
🌻
Dayle in Limoux – Day # 57
August 31, 2022
Matin à Limoux.
‘In the Talmud it is written, “During the times of darkest night, act as if the morning has already come.” When the world is chaotic we can find peace within our hearts. And then we can share our peace with each other. We can forgive, we can bless, we can love, we can create, we can make space for the new in ourselves and in the world. And miracles will follow. This is a moment of chaos, yes, but simultaneously it is a magic hour. It is the sunset of one world and the dawning of another. Day has turned into night, now the night is turning into day.’
-Marianne Williamson
Pour Guillaume Henri.
First light in Limoux this morning before catching an early train to Arles. So many sites to share, the ancient Roman ruins, and Van Gogh’s cafe. This capture, though, needs its own day.
Bonne nuit.
♡
Dayle in Limoux – Day # 56
August 30, 2022Les Ampoules sont meilleures! Dieu Merci.
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After my climb up to St. Salvayre late last week, the blisters are better and time for new exploration. Heading to Arles tomorrow, where I can explore Roman ruins and basque in the energy and paintings of Vincent van Gogh. In 1888, after two years living in Paris, he yearned for sunshine and the colors of Midi-France, the South of France. Apparently, he was consumed by creativity during his time in Arles, before he left to voluntarily be committed to a psychiatric institution in Saint-Rémy de Provence. 🌻
You know what’s so wild? I was in Denver last summer for my birthday to be with my son and his girlfriend, and my daughter and her boyfriend, to visit the traveling Van Gogh exhibit called, Van Gogh Alive!
It was s p e c t a c u l a r and incredibly moving. And now, this year for my birthday (!), Arles and walk in Vincent’s footsteps, absorbing, Gaia willing, his energy…feeling his presence. Who knew! The Universe. ℒℴve ☆҉ it when that happens.
Incredible, really, the U.S. media has not picked up on what Lance Armstrong and his WEDŪ team did for the kids in Uvalde. Maybe if DT was somehow involved, either dissing it or the providers, they would have then covered it and amplified what collective compassion and goodness can do for a community to heal violent devastation and emotional wounds.
I wrote about this yesterday. If it wasn’t for listening to the Vuelta update on The Move podcast/YouTube, I would not have known the bikes were delivered.
BIKES FOR UVALDE DELIVERED
On August 27th, 800 bikes and helmets were delivered to the children in the Uvalde, Texas community – $269,446 in donations!
Here’s what Lance had to say about your tremendous efforts.
Thank you for making a difference!
From Lance…
“To say the experience was powerful & moving & emotional would be wildly understating the resilience of the children and community of Uvalde, and of the human spirit; but it’s a good place to start. I truly believe there’s an unmatched freedom in bicycles; and in that freedom, there’s power. To all involved, thank you.”
Would love to find the Cave of Bethlehem, where the Cathars reportedly conducted their initiations, for the Parfaits, and many people connected with them visited. Perhaps Mariam of Mandela…and Yeshua. The Rosicrusians ascribed and still ascribe great importance to the space. Some believe invitations continue to take place there in the cave.
P. 422 of the book, The Manuscript, I picked up at the book shop in Rennes-les-Chateau: “…can’t run away from he past, always present and now.”
Ancient Aramaic prayer:
Heavenly Source
You Who are everywhere
Thy Kingdom come
Your will be done
Here and now and for evermore.
Fill us with the power of your mercy.
And free us from the fetters with which we bind each other.
Lead us out of temptation: free us from ourselves
And give us the strength to be one with You.
Teach us the true power of forgiveness.
May this holy moment be the ground
From which our future actions grow.
Amen.
To many of you, this will sound familiar. You may know it in later versions as “Our Father,” “The Lord’s Prayer,” or “Pater Noster.”
From the Center of Action & Contemplation this week:
“Parables are a wisdom genre. They belong to mashal, the Jewish branch of the universal tradition of sacred poetry, stories, proverbs, riddles, and dialogues through which wisdom is conveyed. . . .
We can see the razor edge of Yeshua’s brilliance as he takes the familiar world of mashal far beyond the safety zone of conventional morality into a world of radical reversal and paradox. He is transforming proverbs into parables—and a parable, incidentally, is not the same thing as an aphorism or a moral lesson. Its closest cousin is really the Buddhist koan, a deliberately subversive paradox aimed at turning our usual mind upside down. . . . Their job is not to confirm but to uproot. You can imagine the effect that had on his audience!
Stories were Yeshua’s stock-in-trade, the main medium by which he conveyed his message. The parables occupy fully 35% of the first three Gospels. But one of their most surprising features is that they are not about God. They are about weddings and banquets, family tensions, muggings, farmers sowing and reaping, and shrewd business dealings. God is mentioned in only one or two. . . . Rabbi Yeshua obviously wanted us to look closely at this world, not some other one. It is here and now—all around us in the most ordinary things—that we find the divine presence.”
jai
Drinking Blanquette de Limoux, Perrier, and inhaling the sounds, the music, the French conversation, the beautiful and quiet energy of Limoux, on the Place de le Republique. Merci, Le Concept, for the Wifi. :)
Demain (tomorrow), Gaia willing, Arles!
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