And all this is fitting

 [ Lucerne ]

I visited Lucerne about a month ago and still this sculpture haunts me: one of those works that seems to have had to be made, to the point that the event it commemorates (the massacre of Swiss guards during the French Revolution) likewise seems necessary. Mark Twain described the statue in A Tramp Abroad :

"The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting. 

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is."

And now, completely unrelated and lightyears less depressing: deer (turn the volume way up and listen to the joke in the first ten seconds). Also note my cunning focus on the single deer to produce the desired shock when I pan out to a whole field's full (close enough to touch, not that I did--no lyme disease this winter, thanks).

To complete the non sequiturs - 

Suddenly it hits me: "I love you" and "I miss you" [prayers to the same God].
That somewhere between 6,000 miles and inches away from my fingertips
There's a home that will keep [all of] us,
The people I want to save.
I intend to keep you.
Go see, of course,
But find your way back.

[The cliche is no less true.]

City planning

Three distinct, fantastic cities in such a short window -- still sorting them out. Be it river, lake or sea I can't imagine living anyplace without water nearby. Give me a bench and trees and a hill to watch it all from, to take in the ebbs and pulses.

 [ Lyon ]

 

 [ Amsterdam ]

 [ Prague ]

Nobody's got the keys to the elephant factory inside us. -- Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Things we found

Such a commotion and din.

 

Best study break in recent history.  

   

Once the kids stopped hogging the thing.

Chalk another up to the Swiss: excellent playgrounds.