Barcelona: Gaudi's Vision provides a break from Gargoyles

Certainly the world is going through a terrible moment. Janine Marchessault, a brilliant writer and Marshall McLuhan expert, explains the paradox of the electronic environment as revealed in McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy:

In "The Gutenberg Galaxy" electric culture emerges from the literate world as a mutation transforming everyday attitudes and institutions into those grotesque gargoyles... Gargoyles represent the grotesque imagination, which is capable of illuminating the present and accessing the unconscious of a culture. Hence all the 'talk', Internet chatting, cellphones, email communication, is precisely this 'outering' of inner thoughts. Indeed 'illumination' and 'anxiety' are the key effects of this new age. Because all that is hidden is shared, illumination begets 'Anxiety'.

("Marshall McLuhan", by Jane Marchessault, p. 149-- Sage Publications, 2005)

I'm enjoying majestic Barcelona, the city of tapas and Gaudi artwork. I catch nothing of the conversation on the street and watch no TV. Still I hear the world's and America's incessant pain and clamor. Our gargoyle have been unleashed, just like the figures atop Norte Dame. McLuhan, the convert to Catholicism, made much of the invention of the printing press in 1450. He tells us of the psychic toll created by books and the rise of literacy in the Western world. McLuhan warns the digital age creates a similar trauma-- and we are in the midst of it. The gargoyles have been unleashed.

But back to Gaudi and La Sagrada Familia, his magnificent ode to nature built in stone and light, a work motivated by his Catholic religious faith and passion for art, creativity and architecture. La Sagrada Familia has the grandeur of a Middle Ages edifice but it is a 20th century product! We can only explain Gaudi's genius as other-worlds. The spindly spires enchant from the outside somehow more graceful, flexible, thin and kinetic than tall columns into the sky can normally achieve. I heard somebody say "it's like a forest inside." I could not imagine what they meant.

The magic of La Sagrada Familia continues as one enters the basilica. Not sure "basilica" is correct term? We are inside the massive church. Gaudi conveys nature inside by crating columns like towering tree limbs reaching to the top of the building. Like trees, the interior columns show knobs, are guide Josep called them "knots." Gaudi used extremely strong material and ingeniously figured the greatest load-bearing positions in the columns. The building rises upward without the need for buttresses, no signs of flying butress support structure like Notre Dame. This allow the feeling of a natural, organic world and the flood of colored light passing through stain glass window completes the effect.

Perhaps, as McLuhan states, the artist provides us a bridge into the future. Gaudi, a 20th century master, brings us to our tactile future, full of sensory richness, the crazy world of social media and open, sometimes frightening expression? Gaudi's playful, improvisatory houses and apartment buildings are known for their whimsy and fun. With La Sagrada Familia he chooses a normally sober setting and depicts the life of Jesus Christ while offering the life energy of his other works.

La Sagrada Familia was our first stop in Barcelona. You might want to the same. The gargoyles of modern life, racing across the social network, fade into the background as Antoni Gaudi takes you to higher ground.

Paris Journey: walking the city

This was a Mega-day in Paris. Leo, from our VRBO owner brought us through an entry door and past a mini-courtyard. We stood at a large heavy steel door, thick enough to protect Napoleon's Crown Jewels. This door would almost bring me to my knees in tears at the end of a long, jet-lagged first day in Europe. We would inadvertently lock ourselves out of our rented apartment and give up hope of ever getting in at the end of a race around Paris.

The Marais apartment has a swell location near the majestic City Hall and the incomparable Norte Dame. That, ND, was on our first stop and Molly and my jaunt and we have cellphone photos to prove it. Then we continued our mad dash, crossing the Seine to a couple of historic cafes, Deux Margot and Cafe de Flore. Café de Flor was home to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre. Hemingway quaffed his drinks at Deux Margot. A "Margot" is something like a magi that appeared at Christ's birth. Not sure what happened to the third one on the way to the cafe? Maybe couldn't keep up with his pals, just like I was falling behind Molly—or crossed the street to Café de Flor. We were in the 6th Arrondissiment... that's the French word for neighborhood or district and there are 19 of them in Paris.

We pushed further west through some beautiful neighborhood streets, bleached stonewall and wrought iron grillwork fences on balconies overlooking the winding antique streets. Parisians do not honk their horns thankfully. You occasionally hear the bleating sound of emergency vehicles. The mournful horns make you feel like you're in a World War II movie.

Molly walks incredibly fast and darts between and around slower pedestrian and sometimes automobiles with grace and skill. After about 4-5 miles into our walk, and working on very little sleep I found myself wilting with exhaustion. I felt relieved when we came across a group of bystanders observing a formal welcome ceremony at the Foreign Ministry building, facing the Seine from the south side or Left Bank. Two rows of soldiers in dress uniform lined the staircase with swords pointed downwards as the dignitaries entered the building. We joined the group to watch for a few minutes.

I exhaled. Home was not far away. We crossed the river to our side. We are staying in Marais. We jumped into a Metro at Place de la Concorde. A couple of drunks looked us over with rheumy eyes and went back to their inebriated conversation. We got out at Hotel De Ville, our stop. We got in the first door but the heavy vaulted; steel door's lock would not budge. This problem smacked me like a George Foreman roundhouse right. We not only had No Exit and No Entrance.

Lord help me... we're just a few blocks from Norte Dame after all. The prayers were answered; luckily my cellphone worked. We called the rental agency and the blond VRBO lady with the English accent showed up. She opened the mighty steel door. We had turned the key the wrong way and double-locked it. We were stuck in the labyrinth with a Minotaur snorting torrid breath on us for a few scary moments. She showed up! We got in to our beautiful, roomy, sprawling Paris apartment with its own little courtyard. Life is good. Paris is enchanting.