I watched flecks of ash drift through a forest smudged by the curling heat waves of the fire at my feet before my lightheadedness and I sat down. My skin had only just stopped steaming and body was confused. I could hear the clatter of the crows bothering the osprey in the east, but the world sounded muffled, filtered through a helmet of nausea that mocked whatever relief the cool air and fifty cent water bottle contained.

As more ash collected on the stones in the fire, the smell of smoke and lavender dried with the earth’s grit to my skin and a manageable clarity returned in time for me to take my last drink, thank my lineage and crawl back into the lodge for another round of shared steam, darkness and humility.

When the door shuts, vision is left somewhere else in the world where distinction matters. It’s packed up in the men’s shed with old tools, weathered chairs and the steer skull in the rafters where the rats can’t get to it. Here in the lodge, my hair curls, perspiration slides down the ridge of my nose and light is shut out by secondhand blankets and thick black canvas. Sight is meaningless next to all that’s rendered speakable by burning lips.

Among the currents of breath, there is little the heat does not touch. It fills the blanketed willow frame from the top down, poring up from the superheated stones in wet sparks and cascades down my back until it pushes me and the memory of the cold completely to the earth. It’s here that I find some measure of peace at the edges of the blankets covering the ground. They are the ones that start to soak up the mixture of steam and sweat pouring off my body and around them are patches of muddy earth that resist the heat better than my soft flesh. I whisper to these patches of mud with pants of ever-increasing single-mindedness and with cooler echoes of my own words the ground touches my face, offering more comfort than I imagined I’d need.

Somewhere behind me and in the background of my thoughts, the others sing and chant in a different language. I suppose if you could sing, it would take your mind off the heat. Theo runs the sweats and his voice is the first and last you hear. “Try to breath slow.” He told me, “Otherwise, you heat up from the inside.” Theo has demeanour of a man who’s walked through a solar storm of ionizing radiation and come out the other side with a peacefulness and a taste for heat.

With Theo and Ken’s help, my brother and I spent an hour bending willow saplings that were dug into the ground into an eight-person tent frame that we secured together using a basic square lashing of ripped strips of one hundred percent neon green cotton. Theo told me he called the lashing an Easter knot. I’m not sure why I didn’t follow his obvious prompting, but I just nodded and continued to hold two perpendicular branches together. My naively staged conversational rebellion in failing to ask after the knot’s name wasn’t going to stop Theo from telling the story, however.

“Do you know why it’s called an ‘Easter knot’?” He asked me as he swung one of his four long braids of thick black hair over his shoulder. I didn’t know. Theo smiled and said, “John Easter started tying things with it, eh?” He and Ken both laughed.

Theo continued, “I said it’s called an Easter knot, after him. He said, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Why not?’” Theo chuckled again and I smiled like a child among grownups.

When I first arrived, I introduced myself twice to a man named Sy and felt foolish. In the calm before the storm, Sy struck up a conversation and introduced himself more thoroughly. For eleven years, he’s worked at a shelter downtown. He’s proud of his position and unafraid to enforce their strict behaviour and entrance policies. He’s a man used to kindly reminding people of the rules. The first time the lodge door opened, Sy stopped my exit to let the ladies out first. As we sat during the first break, he stopped me from drinking water before offering some to the earth in ceremonial gratitude. They were kind reminders of rules that harken back to a tradition now mingling with invitations sent via global satellites and donuts that arrive in a box covered with images of more donuts.

The sweat was supposed to start at 2pm and last a few hours. With the remaining fire left to extinguish itself behind an oasis of trees, my brother and I waited at the edge of the small lot next to orange pylons and tufts of weedy grass for our ride just as the sun set around 9pm. Like so many other things, time means something else here. You wind through the trampled path to get to the clearing that holds the Grandfathers and you bring in little bits of your world. We carry in schedules, dinner appointments and clumsy expectations only to watch their importance scatter with each swipe of the pine tree brush on ash covered stones.

I stood flushed and happy in my own skin and shivered a bit with the wind.

This morning, remnants of the weekend’s snow fall lurk in the shadows. Fortunately there are few places to lurk as the late wintry morning light floods most of this side of the street.

Any peaceful warmth the sun may bring, however, is ignored by the endless and overfed traffic. Clark is the main artery for industry in east Vancouver. It’s the kind of road whose flow rips with the dirty roar of metal combustion and a speedy indifference to the stillness of its salt-sprayed sidewalks.

Some busy roads offer the personable context of community: Large sidewalks with cafe destinations here. Not even a spring-time version of the roadside garden can outweigh the onslaught of this road, though. Its business is a destination sustained only by a noise that industrial city angst can maintain.

Today, I wait foolishly hoping that the sun may banish, however slowly, the chill from the wind sneaking around the glass sides of the bus shelter. The traffic monster next to me drones on with its technological existential crisis. Movement captures my attention as I turn away from it.

An old Chinese lady in a burgandy jacket sits cross-legged on her balcony facing the sun. Her eyes are shut and she rolls back and forth on her seat transfixed. I can’t tell if she is crazy, just trying to stay warm or engaged in some practiced exercises. I decide that it would be better for the world if it were the latter.

So with my decision, at once I am impressed with the humour and beauty of the situation. She is obviously passed the needless worry of self-consciousness that plagues spiritual practice and youth in western society. She is in clear sight of a busy intersection that wouldn’t have time to notice anyway.

On the one hand, what kind of meditative peace could you possibly find next to the hungry traffic monster caged in cement, meridian dividers and paint? And on the other, what could be more symbolic of the conceptual struggle between movement and stillness?

I’m astounded by the easy power it would take to turn the roar into some white noise, some ocean. She sits next to that mechanical river of contemporary life and prays to the morning light while I jump in, carried away on a numbered boat and can’t pull my mind from its flow.

I find that animated features are so closely linked with children’s narratives that when a mature animation comes along, complete with gore and sexual allusions, it takes me a while to adjust (this is a cartoon, they shouldn’t be doing that!). Aside from the more blatant story deviations in Robert Zemeckis CG epic Beowulf, there is one that sticks out the most.

The filmmakers felt the need to exaggerate the terror that Grendel’s mother possesses and the danger that she threatens. There are only a few key steps that are required to really make this happen and in the process ensure that this becomes the blockbuster ode to the Anglo-Saxon heroic oral tradition that it really should be.

First off, let’s cast Angelina as the great object of all male lust – a pretty scary thought, either because of her market value to all the gamers who are dying to see this film or because of the nature of the motivation behind this deviation.

Next, let’s make her more powerful than Grendel. She kills only one man in the epic poem, but our unfortunate CG Beowulf wakes after the victory-over-Grendel-celebration to find all the men in the mead hall dead and hanging from the rafters. Suddenly she is much more monstrous.

Lastly and best of all, the one thing that will make her stature more terrifying than any foe that Beowulf has ever faced, the one thing that will solidify her both in the hearts of all those gamers and in the halls of fear and wonder as stunningly powerful, stunningly beautiful and glowing in all her twenty-first century adaptation glory, is her shoes. Let’s clad her only in dripping gold leaf and heels. Man, if she has time to braid 12 feet of hair, can rip !@#$ up, walk on water and do it all in heels as if it were a regular day at the water cave she must truly be the anti-Christ.

My Master’s Final Report: Introduction:

This cumulative report will attempt to establish to what degree I have fulfilled the proposal put forward at the beginning of the year. Along the way, the paper should demonstrate an advanced reflective sensibility more suited to a professional than a student. Having said that, the paper omits much of the documentation of the experimental content that remains an integral part of the practice.

After a review of the specific production information for each of the relevant projects, the paper will provide an overall critical evaluation of the year, try to contextualise my current position and describe in detail how the direction of the proposal has changed.

As the report dives immediately into a description of the projects, the report structure assumes at least a general knowledge of the background of the practice. The year has seen an attempt at an integration of some of the tenets of the world’s wisdom traditions into suitable content for short films. I have investigated the function rather than the content of religion. The narrative and historical base of religion that make up content seems less able to integrate with a syncretic philosophy.

Download PDF: Project Completion Report

This paper investigates a number of elements derived from my practice. Specifically, it considers in depth historical analyses of one area of my interest: the passion of wonder. The paper uses Luce Irigaray and Philip Fisher’s readings of René Descartes section on wonder from his The Passions of the Soul. Obviously, through the tree of wonder, the topical focus branches out and touches a few other related areas. I have chosen to concentrate on where wonder traces notions of (1) the everyday, (2) time, and (3) knowledge.

I quickly abandoned my original goal to include an analysis of ‘spirit’ simply because it so often provokes a problematic response that I was unwilling to tackle again. I hesitate to claim that its mildly diversionary replacements pose any less scope or difficulty, simply that the notion of spirit seems notoriously contentious within the academic context.

While trying to remain within the confines of a critical analysis of my interests, the paper will refer to Kristen Lippincott’s broad overview of time from a National Maritime Museum publication, as well as Henri Bergson’s unique perspective on duration. A number of other theorists and poets sneak in but by no means can this paper be considered an exhaustive authority. Lastly, the paper does not propose any structural framework designed for a personal understanding of the aforementioned ideas. Instead, it simply highlights some key topical ideas.

Within the thaumatology that is the science of wonder, there are a few starting points to its investigation. The typical definition has two parts: (1) n. the pleasure of amazement; and (2) vb. to question. I suspect that the paper deals more with the former than the latter. But what is the situational context for this pleasure of amazement?

Download PDF:  On Wonder, The Everyday, Time And Knowledge

The premise of this paper is that non-dual spiritual knowledge can be equated on a limited level with tacit non-verbal knowledge-in-action. The paper takes a general conceptual and philosophical approach to the issue, using writers such as Schön, Polanyi, Wilber, D. T. Suzuki, and D. Tacy.

The author offers a list of conventional types of spiritual knowledge and compares one of the types (spirit-in-action) with Schön’s definition of tacit knowledge-in-action. The paper presents the idea that both spirit and tacit knowledge lie somewhere at the foundation of everyday personal experience. To that end, several examples are given to illustrate how tacit knowledge manifests in specific wisdom traditions and by extension how those forms can be carried into everyday life.

The paper concludes with an attempt at relating these ideas to the author’s artistic practice and by proposing some potential theoretical problems with the premise. The scope of the sampled wisdom traditions is limited to the selection of Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta and Neoplatonism.

Download (PDF): Tacit, Spiritual and Artistic Knowledge

Stonehenge

All my closing thoughts seem inadequate or overly sentimental – I remember flying home, arriving at the Victoria International airport, seeing my parents, driving back along the highway and entering the house I had called home for so long. I foresaw the unfolding of all the events in my imagination with a certainty uncharacteristic of life. There were minor variations, of course: hedges trimmed, new music on the radio, new pictures hanging on the walls, etc. They were all indicative of time passing but time that I didn’t see. Along with the ever-changing flow of life was a new faith in the genuineness of its transformation. There is a new vibrancy and clarity that accompany each relationship in my life. My time is no longer dragged down by the boredom that lingered before I left. The bustle of walking on different soils has eroded away the veil of presumptuous complacency and re-invigorated my dulling senses.

I have, as we are all beholden to do, begun the building of a grand temple: it is blind to the transience of the thick Roman stones of Nimes’s Arena, hidden from the gazing eyes that marvel at the steel of some Parisian tower; stronger than the rock that is the foundation of all Scottish castles and subtler than all the manufactured perfumes in Grasse. It will be more beautiful than the morning sun reflected off the warm ochre of artist’s studios in south France, more fulfilling than the cold water of an unearthly spring and more patient than the snow-peaked mountains of the Pyrenees. It will be a divine romance more intense than Claudel’s Waltz and a mystery more potent than the standing stones of the Salisbury plane. And it will be my home.

Richard and Wilf at Glastonbury Tor

Prime Meridian

Robin Malim, Hay's Bluff

Richard, Hay's Bluff

More Globe Theatre

His Dark Material's National Theatre, London

Ag, Wilf and Ira, Stonehenge

Swan's and pigeons in Nimes

Pont du Gard, Roman Aqueduct

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle

Roman Architecture, Nimes

Traversing the channel by Eurostar provide the limited excitement of twenty minutes of darkness. The slow ride through rural south London on a bright morning was enough of a pleasure to outweigh the annoyance of an overly talkative school group that shared the adjacent seats. I remember seeing advertisements in London later on that displayed train tracks leading right to the feet of famous Parisian or ‘Brusselsian’ monuments with the tag line: ‘Direct to the heart of Paris’ or ‘Brussels’ depending on the monument of course.

With no where to go initially upon my arrival, the Tate Britain provided not only a free stop to store my blue back pack but also several hours of tours and gazing into the “Turner Vortex”. I would later return to see the Anthony Caro retrospective exhibition, which was not completely installed at that time. A security guard reprimanded me for crossing the ‘do not cross’ line while inspecting one of Caro’s more intimate table-top metallic forms in detail. I found out after a brief discussion that guards are prohibited (even when solicited) from offering their opinion on the art that is exhibited. I thought that their endless rotating half an hour shifts would engender a unique understanding of the art but I never found out.

Four samosas at the Indian take-out restaurant across the street kept me delectable and short company while I waited for my most hospitable cousin to return from work. I hoped his unspoken disaffection was not indicative of my overstaying my welcome and after enquiring, he assured me it was not. I left the tacit causes alone although it was clear that preparing his staff for his absence during a pending two-week trip to Italy would be enough for 80% of his stressed-out annoyance. I had a chance to visit with my aunt who would accompany him to the leaning tower of Pisa when she arrived in London from Vancouver late that week.

Greenwich Observatory

I resolved to stay with good friends of my parents for the remainder of my time London. I would wipe my shoes on their ‘Welcome to the Balham Hotel’ door mat for the next three weeks or so. They kindly welcomed me as a family member and I had an enjoyable time comparing their habits to my parent’s: I have difficulty imagining my mother so enthusiastically enjoying sledding down a gradual slope in Wimbledon Common on a day with less than an inch of snow. Nor can I imagine my dad reviewing expensive cookbooks and troubling himself over the finer preparation points of a mushroom philo-pastry tart!

Monday saw me walk the open green fields and the Prime Meridian at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. With the amount of ambient light given off by London at night, the old 1675 Sir Christopher Wren octagonal Flamsteed House would offer little star-gazing return to its founder King Charles II and his royal astronomers today. It was still a delight, however, to see the sundials, atomic clocks and telescopes, not to mention all four of John Harrison’s ground-breaking timekeepers that provided the answer to the 1714 £20,000 Longitude problem.

Ag, Blob, Wilf and Ira with some Georgian Architecture, Bath

Amazingly (and I admit not so innocently), my now expired international student card still seemed to inspire the discounts that are so necessary in London: My two £45 tickets to each part of a National Theatre’s adaptation of Phillip Pulman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy were only ten pounds each – a significant saving. I even saw the Patrick Stewart and Joshua Jackson live at the Apollo theatre in ‘A Life in the Theatre’; a contemporary ‘Julius Caesar’ at the Swan theatre in Stratford; a convincing and swinging ‘The Rat Pack’ at the Strand; and an awfully dark ‘Festen’ at the Lyric.

After a captivating back-stage tour of the National Theatre, in which we saw everything from the painting studios to the wood and metal workshops to the makeshift puppetry station, I visited the faithful reconstruction of the Globe Theatre. There I learned in a brief half an hour all about the authentic timber framed construction complete with a modern day sprinkler system and the common use of uric acid as a stain remover for well-worn and expensive 16th century clothes.

Roman Baths

I’d bus to Ledbury to visit relatives with whom I would see the Mappa Mundi (a really old round map), Hay’s bluff, and the S.S. Great Briton before bashing my head badly on the low doorframes in their house. While in the West Country, I’d also spend some time with friends in Slaughterford, a small town of 35. The Roman baths, cathedral and Georgian architecture in Bath would fill the day before we visited Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, a Saxon church made in 700 CE, the Magna Charta, Wells Cathedral, Glastonbury Tor, Farleigh Castle and a salvage yard in the next few days.

I finished my last week in London with a refreshing Andy Goldsworthy exhibition and another meeting with a potential supervisor at London Metropolitan University.

What do you hang next to the Mona Lisa? Because of renovations to its regular salon, today Leonardo’s painting is displayed next to Salvator Rosa’s ‘Passage’ and ‘Bataille Heroique’. Who is Salvator Rosa, anyway? I felt flippantly sorry for these paintings: having to endure either an endless neglect or a glance begot only by the oblivious queuing lines and the art history student with an obscure thesis topic. After spending only slightly longer than the appropriate time gazing at the smirking lady and her smooth cracking hands, I stood to one side to watch everyone photograph the Mona Lisa. In some ways, this was more exciting than the painting itself: Mona effortlessly commands a flurry of faithful international fans. She is a tourist monument of immeasurable proportions housed in a slightly smaller than expected frame. But other than the latter fact, what real incentive is there to take her picture? Have you not seen her enough times already? Do you really require one more out-of-focus and poorly lit picture with your thumbprint? Perhaps your friends won’t believe that you have seen her and need some documentary proof? I wonder if Mona ever tires of the endless attention and glances begot only by the oblivious queuing lines and the foreign visitor with an obscure tendency to personify paintings.

Poseidon getting cleaned, Louvre

My hostel lay three km Northeast of city centre in the 19th arrondissement and was not the most inspiring of locations. Aside from the accommodation savings and a neglected guest kitchen at my disposal, I found little reason to return each night – Oh, that’s right, I needed a warm place to sleep! I met few people as I had a dormitory room to myself for half the time. Those I did meet, like me, would return only to sleep, leaving again early in the morning for work or study.

I think my days were filled with sites typical of visitors to Paris: Jardin Luxemburg, Musee d’Orsay, Centre Pompidou, Sacre-Cour de Montmartre, The Opera House, Champs-Elysees, Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe. Of all the galleries, the charmingly small Musee Rodin sits most pleasantly in my memory. After drowning in the smooth skin of classical Greco-roman statues in the Louvre, the surface of Rodin and Camille Claudel’s sculptures offered a refreshing imperfection while the collection offered a passionate example of art at its best.

Camille Claudel’s Waltz, Rodin Museum

Sacre Coeur in Montmartre

In Montmartre I listened to a street performer bow Andrew-Lloyd Webber musicals on his acoustic bass in thumb position without amplification. I sat in front of the 15th century ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ tapestries in a dimly lit room at the Musee Cluny. At the Arab World Institute, I watched the geometric pattern of the ‘moucharabiehs’, which are steel diaphragms on the southern facade that open or close according to the sun.

Paris skyline from Notre Dam’s bell tower

I noted again that every town in France has a street named after Victor Hugo! Victor Hugo’s famous novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, first published in 1831, coincided with a general reawakening of interest in the Middle Ages and its buildings. Hugo’s romantic and picturesque eloquence drew attention to the profoundly dilapidated condition of the cathedral in the early 19th century. He participated in the widespread campaign which resulted in the restoration of the building from 1845. A major par of the action of the novel takes place in the towers. He did not fail to give the bells and their famous bellringer, Quasimodo, a major role. I pictured the Parisian skyline from the heights of Notre-Dame’s 69 metre tall bell-tour in late evening as the gargoyles spoke quietly among themselves. The tip of the giant bell on one side was black with the oil of touching hands. I frequently saw the harmonic Gothic facade of the cathedral during my time in Paris.

Notre Dame and her flying buttresses

The blue stained glass windows of Louis IX’s Sainte-Chappelle, all 6,457 square feet of them, saw me at their feet after having deposited my Swiss Army knife with the security guards at the entrance. It was designed to house the relics of Christ’s Passion, especially the Crown of Thorns. I foolishly paid too much for a hot chocolate in a street-side cafe (again) and shivered on a green park bench while I ate my makeshift lunch under an overcast sky.

Paris in all its glory during the leafless winter month of January offered many interesting but in the end inadequate experiences: they were all missing someone with whom I could share them. I had no one to whisper to, no one to dine out with and ultimately, being in Paris exacerbated my starvation for good company.

Eurostar, Eurostar where art thou?

Eiffel Tower

Paris skyline from Notre Dam’s bell tower

Opera House ceiling

Opera House

As one of the three people checked in, I sit on my short bed in a clean room named after a saint wondering what sort of man my luggage would build. The meantime reminds me of a quotation that says, ‘Art theory is for artists as ornithology is for birds.’ An anonymous investigator assigned the duty of devising my identity would find the Echinacea pills that I recently purchased and might correctly conclude that I was suffering from a sore throat. Or he might notice that all my clothes are either tidily folded or neatly rolled and deduce that I am a fastidious packer. He would track my journey by the Visa receipts that I keep in the top of my bag or from the left-handed scribble of the black notes in my journal. He could review my literature and books, and discover what topics hold my interest. He would undoubtedly spot the purple lavender sachets Cherie so wonderfully made and be reassured that I’d rather spend money on food, lodging and transportation than on laundry. Would he mistake my shoes as being owned by someone over seven feet tall?

Cathedral over shrine to St. Bernadette.

And then I question whether this hypothetical investigator would understand that the rhubarb jam I carry comes on the recommendation of an American bird watcher I met in Avignon? And from what would he devise a purpose for my visit to Lourdes, or France for that matter? My ‘Every Day is Earth Day’ T-shirt and my organic cereal perhaps would direct a train of thoughts towards the idea that I have a particularity for sustainable environmental practices, but would it indicate that I wake up sometimes and believe that I am lying in my own bed in Victoria?

Such details are lost in the gaps between objects. What number of items, what amount of stuff would need to be condensed in my backpack in order to eliminate all gaps and to lay the seeds of a successful investigation? It would be an infinite assemblage of an ever-growing assortment of experiences. My ownership continually grows as if I were diluting water with water. Without doubt, the investigator is doomed to fail: it is an impossible task because no backpack is large enough and no officer has the immeasurable time required.

Yet without my memorable consent, travelling has laid all the pieces of my small life before me and commanded that I assemble them. In fact, the order came before my memory and ends just after it but the simplicity of a limited amount of storage space has cleaned away the dirt that clouds and hides the call. Even my refusal to comply with such demands is another item next to the Echinacea that awaits cataloguing.

And so I sit in an empty dormitory for the Faithful, thankful for the warm meal and ingenuous surroundings, with a looming knowledge that I am doomed to fail at a task that is strangely already complete: It is an ornithological undertaking and I am a bird.

Pryanees Mountains.

From the top of Mount Beoute in Lourdes, I can see the lake to the North West that I walked around yesterday. I am immediately eager to see and to show the photo I took of the view. I am not too impatient, however, to be disappointed about the absence of the direct gratification a digital camera would afford. My disposable will do. Today at the top of the mountain, I am pleased with my hike and content with my decision to visit France, perceptively aware of the changing nature of my momentary and circumstantial affection. Particularly gratifying was the lunch I ate as I sat behind a large boulder thankfully sheltered from the wind but thankfully not from the sun.

My spoon and its reflection.

From my height, I can also see the tips of the fairy tale castle that sits on top of the shrine to St. Bernadette in the elevated nook of the small city. The rock at the shrine is smooth, black and glassy from the river of hands that constantly brush its lengths. The cold would not deter the faithful from filling the most enormous gallons full of the holy water that springs from the rock with its history of miraculous healing. As I watch visitors struggle to carry their jugs and containers home, some part of me still ridicules those that believe gushing quantity will effect more than the reverent dew drop. I see with annoyed and shameful eyes my judgement that their faith is verbose and diluted because of it. As my bag can offer no space for large jugs and I no equal sincerity, I ask that part of me that still lives in arrogant scorn to remain silent as I turn to leave, replacing my toque on my wanting head. To my honest disappointment, in stead of the magic that is said to have once lived here, I see its history of adoption, fabrication and construction. Perhaps it is a magic the faithful bring with them and I was foolish enough only to have brought my judgements.

It bothered me not at the time as my mood was still determinably positive. My sincerity grew more from an acceptance of unfolding events than from the desire for some ‘other’ to approve and heal. And from my elevated position, I could see the splendour of the Pyrenees but somewhere out of site the Spanish border lay. I remember thinking how the land knows how to wait and that you can see it waiting. The snow-capped mountains and the rolling heather-covered hills don’t cough at the smoke of burning leaves, don’t shake their heads in worry over yesterday’s storm and don’t shiver with anticipation of the next chapter. Their flesh is record and breathes so slowly: Their majesty is visible in how they wait.

An unaccountable bleeding nose after my decent and another in Toulouse soon afterward would indicate the lessening of my stamina. My memory of Lourdes is still fond however: typical of her unexpected generosity, Otilia kindly picked me up half way to the train station on the day of my departure and drove me the rest of the way in order that I might not miss my train. How many dormitories do you know offer free shuttles in the off season? I am certain that those at Maison St. Therese picked up the questioning and concern I have written about so far.

Italy had been a potential consideration but for want of better timing and preparation; in Toulouse, my resolve would solidify to end my time in France with a week in Paris…