The Frogmarch

"I've got to pull up my stakes and roll, man." --Jean-Jacques Libris de Kerouac

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Local Miracle


I'm not sure how this happened. The calendar on the wall (which purports to be an Outer Banks calendar but which for the March photo clearly shows mountains in the background of an idyllic beach scene... I think I got ripped off) tells me that it's been four years to the day since I moved to France. Four years! That means that Lyon has moved past Pittsburgh on the list of places I've lived the longest, to take a distant third behind Chapel Hill and Charlotte.

Four years is long enough that at times I take things for granted. For example, the pictures attached here show the Cathedral St-Jean, which I walk past every single day, usually without so much as an upward glance. It's just your friendly neighborhood miracle, 1000 years old and having taken 400 years to build, site of the 14th-c. consecration of Pope John XXII and the wedding of Henri IV to Marie de Medici; inside are found a 13th-c automated astronomical clock, two splinters of the True Cross, the hearts and finger bones of various saints, and so forth (no photography allowed inside, unfortunately).

So last weekend I decided to actually take a few moments and poke around. I hadn't been inside the cathedral since the first few weeks after we moved here; needless to say it hasn't changed much. There was some sort of conference going on in the nave, with a guy droning on about the ministry and so on, so I couldn't go look at the clock, but I did poke around the treasury (the Pope's slippers! A coffer looted from Constantinople!). It's good to pinch yourself now and again, to look around you, to open your eyes a little.

The good news is I'm going home to NC for a week or so starting Friday. Here's a good going-home song for you:

2 Comments:

  • At 2:48 AM, Anonymous majordad said…

    One of the worst lip-synching jobs I've ever seen.

    Spring has in Carolina. You won't need your light blue paint for any street parties this year.

     
  • At 9:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I am absolutely amazed that you only got one post in response to what is probably the best thing I have ever seen on the Internet. In fact, I am so fascinated by Eduard that I looked him up on Wikipedia, which seems appropriate on oh so many levels. I learned that he is Russian, and a classically trained musician who was once quite a star.

    When informed he is an internet sensation, Mr. [K]Hil responded: Я об этом ничего не знал, в первый раз слышу. Приятно, что и говорить! Спасибо за хорошие новости! С этой песней связана целая история. Для нее сначала были написаны стихи, но они были неудачные. То есть удачные, но в то время их нельзя было публиковать. Содержание было такое: «я скачу по прерии на своем жеребце, мустанге таком-то, а моя любимая Мэри за тысячу миль отсюда вяжет для меня чулок».

    I deleted over half of his quote due to an assumption that very few of us speak Russian, so here is a very brief translation:
    "Originally, we had lyrics written for this song but they were poor. They contained words like these: "I'm riding my stallion on a prairie, so-and-so mustang, and my beloved Mary is thousand miles away knitting a stocking for me". The song is very naughty – it has no lyrics, so we had to make up something for people would listen to it, and so this was an interesting arrangement."

    All this and a knitting reference, too! We here at the Museum have found all this unduly hilarious - what more could we ask for? But wait....here is a 'remix' I found on the Internet. Please consider doing your own remix!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ78IlJs5JQ

     

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