Khajuraho Is Famous

For the erotic sculptures which ornament its city of stupas.  The sculptures rise in tiers up the faces of the stupas which sit in parklike grounds.  Khajuraho is located in a remote farming region and the stupas were "forgotten" for a very long time until British scholars came to know of them and put them on the art history map.

They were not all constructed at the same time.  In fact they represent successive periods in history and so styles.

They blend Far East Asian Buddhist traditions with Hindu traditions in terms of subject matter, styles of ornament and representation of figures.

And of course there is the anthropomorphism of Hindu iconography

Here is lovely Ganesh, the God of prosperity and luck doing what I think of as the "hippy-hippy shake" (missing some body parts)

and in a more lordly pose

You've probably seen this one on the sides of incense packets.

There is not as much ornamentation inside the stupas but the ceilings are usually representations of heaven.

There are also Jain temples in Khajuraho.  This faith depicts Buddha as a very much younger figure with a more boyish physique and I think that is a stylized Bodhi tree above his head.

Khajuraho is not really a town and the actual "old village" is quite small.  It can be visited in about 20 minutes.  When I visited, the people were still quite innocent country folk.  Although you will be shocked when your guide tells you that he specializes in Japanese as well as English.  And that the New Zealand and Australian accent is impossible for him to understand although his English is almost perfect.  The world comes to them and not vice versa.  Since it is a farming community it is very vulnerable to vicissitudes of climate.  You will not find aggressive begging and touting here as you will in the big cities.  The people of Khajuraho are very proud.  But you will be encouraged to spend money in their very good and clean restaurants, hotels and shops.  Khajuraho was our third stop after Delhi and Varanasi and we made a big mistake there.  We visited the beautiful waterfalls in a magnificent setting outside of town.  We attended a folk dancing performance whose musical accompanists were world class.  But we did not BUY ANYTHING in Khajuraho.  We had a long couple of weeks ahead of us and we did not want to load our suitcases up right away with stuff.  And that was the wrong thing to do.  In India there is poverty everywhere and everyone wants you to share what they perceive to be your great-riches-from-the-world-outside with them.  And how do you weigh the poverty and need that you see in Delhi or Mumbai against the want and the fear of the countryside where all the riches are in the soil or in the clouds in the sky and any help must come from miles away when Mother Nature lets the farmers down?  When you tell your guides (the sons of farmers) in Khajuraho that you are saving your shopping sprees for Mumbai, you might as well put a knife in their hearts.  And I'm sorry to say that that is what I did.  I didn't realize it then.  But I do now.

So if you find yourself in Khajuraho, can I suggest that like the Buddha and the Jain devotees in later life you........renounce ATTACHMENT...........to your rupees of the moment.  And attach yourself to a little wood carving.  Or a trinket made of metal.  Or a stone lotus.  Or a lovely piece of cloth or jewelry.  You won't regret it.

Vacances de Toussaints

Well it was very bewildering.  When I landed up in Aix-en-Provence as a young woman.  In my black t- shirt and cowboy boots.  Signed up at the Beaux-Arts.  Got my keys to the room behind the dance studio.  "Haven't we just started school?"  "Why have we got vacation already?"  Not that it didn't have a certain appeal, vacation in November. Where and when before in my life had that ever happened?  Summertime yes.  Easter break of course.  But the month of November, the month before the time when we'll have two weeks off again for Christmas?  Well, NEVER!

What a concept!!!  So Elaine and I hatched a plan:  We would not tell Mme. Certainly not.  Because if we did she would spoil all our vacation adventures by asking us to stay in Aix looking after Mme. F.  That was part of the rental deal.  Room behind the dance studio, centre ville, furnished, high ceilings, two-burner cooktop with bouteille de gaz, chambre douche, wc in exchange for a nominal rent and some old-lady sitting.

But no.  The old lady would have to wait.  We were young and indifferent and agreements weren't exactly agreements and who knew when the next chance would come? Besides Dave was headed into town.

So off we went on a train to the Alps.  Hitched a ride from Briancon to Turino in a VW Camper.  Hop and skip on the "Orient Express" and presto-pazzo three Americanos in Venezia in the blue-y gold light shoo-ing pigeons across St. Mark's Square.  That kinda worked!  Practicing our Italian - lui, voi, lei......uno, due, tre!  Due cappuccini per favore!

So last week, somewhere in the world, someone or two were on vacation.  Les Vacances de Toussaints. And this is where they might have landed, and this is what it might have looked like:

Una famiglia en vacances

Une petite place.

A quiet hilltop.

A cozy room.

A castle and a satellite dish.

A furry friend

   A wander.

Down winding streets.

Up winding streets

Un coin tranquille

Peut-etre deux filles.

Des murs rocheux-rouges

Des places "espace"

Des jeux

Eglise ou restaurant?

Cimetiere avec vue

En bref, des vacances

Pres de St. Paul de Vence!

With apologies to Ludwig Bemelmans and Dr. Seuss.  Photos taken in and around Haut-de-Cagnes and St. Paul de Vence.  Anyone want the hotel name in Haut-de-Cagnes email me.

From Bangalore to Mysore

So I still have some India pics to share with you all.   Our trip also took in Khajuraho and Agra.  I haven't posted pictures of these places as lovely as they were.  Mostly because you can see some of the same images in art books and National Geographic.  And they don't have the same presence in pictures as they do in real life.  But if you have the chance you must go to both those places.  Meanwhile here are some pictures of temples and vendors.

I wish I had a better picture of the following temple.  I took the photo as we were rushing past in the car and most of the face of the temple was quite shaded.

Can you believe that parrot?  The sculpture in the south of India is quite cartooney.  I'm sorry I can't explain why.

You can't really tell it while IN Bangalore but the countryside already is quite tropical.

And these temples rise up out of nowhere.

India is a very religious country.  Religion is interwoven into daily life.

Everyone has their own personal god, and seemingly a very personal relationship with that god.  Which includes a little shrine to him/her at home.  You will also find many streetcorner shrines that are much smaller in scale than temples. But people stop by at odd times of day to get in touch with their deity.

Portable temple: BYOG (Bring Your Own God?)

There is a naivete to these representations but still a wonderful sensitivity especially in the animal figures.

I think they are telling the story of the Ramayana, the epic tale of Rama and Gita that everyone in India seems to know and which seems to elicit great happiness in it's recounting.

Rama is assisted in his rescue of Gita by Hanuman, the Monkey God

There are no apparent conflicts between commerce and religion at these sites.  People need to buy flowers and fruit sometimes to bring to their shrines and no one ever minds a cool drink or snack after coming out.  I guess you could call this the Indian version of the mini-mall

Division of labor seems to be that the men engage in the commerce and interaction with the public.

While the women labor.  In the countryside you will see a lot of men lounging like this around shops, outside homes. Meanwhile the woman are on their hands and knees in the fields or doing laundry or carrying water (on their heads, yes!).  Nice life guys!

And yes, the cows do belong to SOMEONE.

Even in the simplest vignette, there exists wide ranging and harmonious interminglings of color.

A family home by the roadside.

Moors 'n' Doones - the River Dart

Due to the acute onset of country-love..........

What HAS gotten in to me?  Maybe three straight weeks of malingering around the house with a not-quite-the-swine-flu-cough-cough-cough?!  More like quickly becoming a horrendous case of cabin fever and craving-wooly-jumpers-and-muddy-boots, wet-dogs-with-hot-breath, a cutting-wind-that-takes-your-own-breath-away and -------------

Have you ever read Lorna Doone?  Or eaten any of the cookies named after her?  I think Lorna Doone was the first real book I read at about 8 (Otherwise it was all and only Hardy Boys mysteries).   L.D. was a great (to an 8-year-old) romantic novel about a humble farm boy John Ridd who falls in love with beautiful, virtuous and pure Lorna a young lady of mysterious foreign origins who was kidnapped by a band of robbers called the Doones.  And so memorably thrown crossways over a saddle with her purply silks and silky locks and probably a gold medallion on a thick gold chain dangling off the horses haunches!  (I did say romantic!)  But what does this have to do with the River Dart?

Our friend Mary who has only lived  in the most romantic and magical places in her life - Lindisfarne, Shepton Mallet, Wookie-Hole (Yes! I did say that!) but mostly in the South West of England has recently decamped to a place called Poundsgate at Zellions on the River Dart.  I got a little excited when I heard about the move because I remembered Lorna Doone and descriptions of the countryside as being dramatic and violent and dark, congruent with the character of our erstwhile Ridd's struggle to win Lorna's love and see off those very scary Doone boys whose evil malefactions were blighting the Exmoor landscape and slowly but surely doing away with one or the other of John Ridd's family and close associates - - (hmmm sounds familiar, think Mario Puzo read this book - or Dick Cheney?)

AHHHH but you notice I said EXMOOR.  In fact it is the NEXT moor over from DARTMOOR.  And Zellions is situated overlooking the River DART.  So not quite the same moor, but NONETHELESS.  In my mind, and ever the optimist: MOOR = MOOR.  I had to see one.  So last summer we hopped on the train at Paddington Station and wound our way through the chalk hillsides with giant white horses cut into them by ancient cults.  And landed in a green place with dark lowering clouds always threatening to rain (which it did non-stop for two months as soon as we left again) and off we went straight for a wander over the moors.

It started out sunny and bucolic like any sunny day in a country neighborhood.

The fields were tranquil, the sheep were feeding

The wild foxgloves and Queen Anne's Lace were proliferating.

The Brits call it cow parsley, maybe Queen Anne wasn't actually so keen on it.

We reached the summit of this particular moor and it was an empty landscape all around.

There were no cloaked men lurking behind craggy trees, trying to keep their riding gear from rattling in the night.

And no black turbulent bogs with desperate clutching hands reaching out of them at you.

The wild ponies were wandering and clumping. In fact the landscape was quite benign.

The sky was another story.

So we turned right and entered a wood, and once inside, I was reminded of an entirely different book.

Which I'd read at about 14 or 15.  Any guesses?  It involved long ramblings.

And quests. Many obstacles. And a ring. I'm sure you've read it too.

p.s. :  A geographical feature anywhere BUT Southwest England or Yorkshire might just as well be known as a "rather large hill" as opposed to a "MOOR" so maybe I HAD seen one already.  I guess I had to find that out.  And the photos were taken by Mr. Paradis on his I-phone (marvelous contraption) with some tweaking and touching-up by yours truly.

I JUST CAN'T RESIST

I feel so compelled to post cartoon-colored food.   



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