I've been so busy, trying to wrap up my work so I can have a couple weeks of travel before I head home, so I've not resized and uploaded many pictures of the last batch of churches. I went to Poitiers on Friday, though, and was completely taken in by the crypt of the 6th century Saint Radegunde (one of my personal heroines, simply because she was an uppity, yet humble, woman). Here's a quickie of me in the crypt, Peony Moon blooming in the candlelight...
...and another of the steep stairs down to the crypt. An amazing place.
The crypt up close. It was beautiful and peaceful.
I'm off to Toulouse on Thursday, hopefully more pics up by then!
Another day of amazing discoveries that leads me to wonder what it was about this particular area that bred such perverse visual language. Today I shot the tiny church of Givrezac, near Champagnolles (where I was yesterday). Givrezac is a pretty little village, almost identical to Champagnolles, but where Givrezac is clean and bustling with life and had a rather mid-to upper class feel about it, Champagnolles was a dirty, dying slum where people stood around and stared at the crazy redhead on a bicycle come to take pictures of their delapidated church. Like Champagnolles, Givrezac's sculptural program was also fraught with profanity and male genitalia. For example, there was this...I don't know...it looks like a viking, but it's probably a demon:
Then there's this guy, who is smiling for obvious reasons:
And yet another megaphallic glutton, as at Champagnolles. But I could shoot from farther back in Givrezac, so I got a good view of what he's eating. If my eyes aren't playing tricks on me, his snack has a cross on it, which means he's chowing down on the host while his bits dangle beneath.
Again, a serious lack of female figures here, and Valentina commented previously about the Champagnolles glutton that that sculpture incorporated a couple things near and dear to men's brains (food and sex). I think she's absolutely correct, particularly when one considers the 12th century-- it was truly a man's world, so of course the majority of these sculptures are directed at the male brain or set of morals.
And rather fittingly (and infuriatingly), as I was walking back to my hotel after dinner this evening, a young man approached me and asked me something. I explained that I neither speak nor understand French very well, so sorry, and continued on my way. A couple minutes later, he pulled up next to me and asked (in English) if I was English. I never admit to being American over here, so I said yes. He then tried to pick me up, so I let loose with every nasty epithet I could come up with and if he didn't figure out I was American after that, then he's doubly stupid. Yeah, not all men, but seriously, fuckin' men...
Oh my. I am really beat after riding in the heat today and getting lost on top of everything else. However, I found a little church in the village of Champagnolles that was just a goldmine of smut. The entire sculptural program was peppered with the most profane things, and ot a single religious image anywhere. How bizarre. The piece that really grabbed my attention was this glutton, who obviously has other things on his mind besides food.
Unbelievable. There were couples having sex, men showing their anuses, misers with money bags that looked like huge scrotums. Very graphic for church sculpture. I left and got lost, and finally made it back to the other church I was going to photograph today in the village of St.-Quantin de Ranconnes. That church had a very detailed anus-shower (that's show-er as in "one who shows"), but I have no idea why. He's over the door, so perhaps it was to usher people into the church quickly?
The strangest thing I'm noticing, though, is the lack of obscene women sculptures. There are plenty of women on the level with monsters and demons (the misogyny of some of these programs is mind-blowing), but not in lewd or sexual context. Yet one more avenue for me to explore...
I've heard tell of a Spinarius on the little church of St.-Leger en Pons who has an enormous penis, so naturally, I needed to document this little guy and the rest of the sculpture on the church. It was a beautiful day and a Sunday, so the roads were nice and clear. I rode out and by golly, it's true!
Not only is the feller's twig showing, but his berries are, as well!
This corbel is near the front of the church, and is the only corbel on the table that is easily visble from the road. What a bizarre figure. I thought I saw another figure with his genitals out, but it's hard to tell, even with my awesome zoom, because the stone on this church is beset with some heavy-duty lichen infestation, so it plays tricks on the eyes.
I did so much today, I'm extremely knackered and so I'm hitting the sack. More tomorrow!
I've been in France for almost three weeks, but have been unable to post about the trip so far because the first hotel where I stayed (in the toxic industrial town of Melle) claimed to have internet access, which they in fact did not. Plus, three days after I arrived I became so ill I was making phone calls home to tell people I loved them, because I was sincerely convinced I was going to die. The hotel owner wanted to take me to the hospital, but I couldn't even come up with the energy to agree. I was extremely ill for about 12 days. On top of that, customs seized my bike and tore him apart looking for what? Drugs? That I mailed to myself? Assholes. So I had to rebuild Morpheus when he finally turned up. Somehow, I managed to get some work done. A couple of the churches in Melle had been restored, which is nice for the tourists, but I have to wonder how true to the original some of the sculpture is, you know? I think things are sometimes simplified and sanitized for mass consumption. I have to say, though, that two of the churches (St.-Hilaire and St.-Pierre) were completely awe-inspiring in their sheer mass.
I felt very insignificant standing in the nave, looking up at the stone vaults high above. The one church I was unable to go inside (St.-Savinien) is the only one that had truly "obscene" elements. Below, notice the couple doing the nasty and a man with an erection crawling along.
Both of these are on the west facade of the church-- right by the main entrance.
A few miles outside of town I discovered a little church that had very little sculpture, but what sculpture it did have was nothing but monsters. No religious theme anywhere. I am particularly intrigued by column swallowers and find them particularly phallic, although one of my colleagues disagrees with me. Here's the swallower on the south side of the portal, notice the little hand up to his pointy ear.
His compatriot across the portal has left trails in the column with his teeth.
You can't tell me that's not phallic.
I think I was made ill by the factory in Melle. I still had five days left in the town yet my work there was finished. I gathered up my strength and checked out of the hotel, loaded up my bike, and pedaled 20 miles to the south to the tiny village of Aulnay de Saintonge, whose church I've wanted to visit for years, if for nothing else than to see the ass playing a harp.
What I didn't realize is that the ass also has an erection. In most tourist literature, that part has been photoshopped out. I spent two days in Aulnay and being there was like some sort of healing medicine for me.
Every time I have waves of strong emotion, I can't help but wonder if twelfth century pilgrims felt the same way. I really felt connected to that place and felt completely at peace there. I had planned to ride out of Aulnay and down to Cognac, but the proprietor suggested that, as a historian, I might like the old Roman town of Saintes better, so I took a chance and rode about 35 miles down to Saintes, a town full of medieval and Roman remains (and fantastic shops and restaurants!). Here was another place I felt completely connected to, and indeed, I would say happy. I had a great meal and found myself wandering a little drunk on wine along the banks of the Charente River at sunset,
purely blissed out and at ease.
The next day, I left for Pons, where I will be based for the month of June. Pons is a nice enough town, but I feel a little disappointed with it, especially after Aulnay and Saintes. The good thing is that I have a lot of work to do here to keep me busy and there is a train station (something that Melle didn't have), so I can go places if I need to get away. Saintes is a fifteen minute train ride away for $11, so I'm already planning on going there next Saturday for the day. I'm considering leaving Pons a few days early so I can go stay in Saintes and leave France loving a little bit of it. There's more to this story, of course, but I'm so behind in the telling of the tale, I'm just trying to get up to speed. More episodes later!
I've been working with a variety of TAL oils in order to get myself mentally prepared for this journey and on days when I need to get myself to a very strong place I'll wear several at once on appropriate places on my body in addition to annointing talismans and burning annointed candles. I have room in my bags for five imps of BPAL, which will live in a ittle Tic-Tac box, but I can't take my TALS in their bottles, and I don't have imps of those. So with the utmost respect for Beth's amazing talents regarding the creation of the TALS, I blended my most important TALS together into one tiny bottle (about 2 imps-worth) so I can have them with me. After focusing long and hard on my goal, I went heavy on my daily staples White Light and Anthelion, added several drops of Lionheart and Determination, a few drops of Fiery Wall of Protection, and just a drop each of Charisma and Crown of Success. I added each component until it felt right, and there's my Pilgrimage Blend. I was tempted to add a touch of ACMD, but this is not a blend for material gain, but for spiritual support-- what 12th-century people walking this route would have sought.
This has been a stressful, weepy morning, but in the process of blending these oils together, my heart has lightened and my spirits lifted, I feel optimistic and motivated (even though I would love to just go back to bed). One of the things I want to do is take a picture for Beth of a vista on this pilgrimage that embodies the feeling these oils give me. Somewhere along the way, I'm going to come across a view that makes my heart soar, like these oils do, and I will know that I need to stop and embrace the moment.
I tend to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, and my bicycle, Morpheus, is no exception. So it was with mixed emotins that I left him hanging on a hook in the bike shop, only to return hours to later to retrieve him in pieces contained wihtin two boxes. I transported him to the post office and with much form-filling hassle and a hefty postage fee, I shipped my bestest buddy off to France. If all goes as planned, he'll be waiting for me at my hotel when I arrive next week. Here he is all loaded up for the trial run last week:
Oddly, everything is done, except for tossing in my toothpaste and zipping up the last bag. Somehow, it doesn't seem possible. Now to laze around for the rest of the week and enjoy the bon voyage BBQ this weekend.
In ten days, I leave for a six-week trip to south-western France, where I will be conducting research for my Ph.D. dissertation. I'm going alone and I'll be traveling by bicycle within France along part of the medieval pilgrimage route that runs from Tours to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This is either going to be an extremely meaningful period of introspection and personal growth for me, or I'm going to drive myself nuts before I'm done.
The basis of my dissertation is to construct and decipher a vernacular lexicon comprised of marginal sculpture on twelfth-century churces along this route, concentrating particularly on the use obscene or profane figures. Unfortunatley, the guidelines of the BPAL blogs specifically prohibit the posting of obscene and profane material (no mention of whether 900 year old obscenity counts), so I most likely won't be posting photos of those elements. However, I'll try to link to outside sources like Flickr for the real meaty stuff.
I'm totally packed except for my laptop, my toothpaste, my makeup, and my jammies. I'm shipping my bike over on Tuesday, so it will be waiting for me when I arrive. For the most part, I'm zombified. I'm so ready to go, so ready to be on the road with my camera, and yet I've been having some really severe panic attacks. I'm sure this has to do with my pathological fear of flying. I've not been on a plane since 1993, and in that case, the woman behind me gave me a valium so I'd chill out. Being a control freak can be majorly detrimetal to one's mental health.
So tonight, I'm going to a departmental awards ceremony where I'm getting a nice chunk of change ($4500!) to pay for a lot this trip. And maybe therapy after being alone with myself for so long.
More later...
