Snapshot Notes, Barcelona & Montserrat

Students:P. GuellRain in Barcelona, the three days we were there. At Gaudi’s Parque Güell, our students stand in a steady, chilled rainfall. One of them, Matisse, vamps for this shot. Though the camera doesn’t do the effect justice, the Gaudi tiles glistened with rainwater as if varnished.

Montserrat

Montserrat, serrated mountain. From a distance, its craggy peaks form the working edge of a handsaw. A place of pilgrimage for a thousand years, the Benedictine abbey snugs into the mountain’s recesses. Fog swirled around the cliffs when we arrived and the clouds began to break into blue before we left. Here, even teenagers, customarily chattering loudly among themselves, muted their voices.

Sagrada Familia in rain

Sagrada Familia, in progress these last 130 years, first seen in the rain, with raindrops on my lens. Forbidding, colossal, on the outside, within we found it stunning with light, color, beauty. Gaudi’s passion for Christianity was matched by a passion for the forms of nature, his pillars like trees branching into the ceilings.

Sagrada Familia pillars

The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.

—Antoni Gaudi

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2 Responses to Snapshot Notes, Barcelona & Montserrat

  1. Jana says:

    What a trip!! I’m sure you will be pondering it and writing about it for months to come. Lucky us!

  2. Gregg Painter says:

    “The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.” -Gaudi

    I’d never heard this quote, and it has been a long-time dream to visit the Cathedral.

    My childhood was spent reading the book of Nature, following the moods of the Missouri stream that lay downhill from our house. Catching toads (easy), catching the big bullfrog I thought was a gorilla when I moved into our new house at 5: impossible. Salamanders: only camping in the more remote woods. Tracking ‘possums in the spring snow: yes. Oh, and we had a turtle dog. “Jessie: bring back a turtle!” And in a few minute, a closed-up box turtle would be dropped at our feet and we’d try to feed it but they never ate, so we let them go.

    But fifty years ago, our neighbor had a hardback copy of “Silent Spring” which I read in their house in a nice reading chair in the sunlight. I was eleven; I was devastated.

    Today my face got sunburned while dozing at high noon on Venice Beach to the sound of the Pacific waves. The sun and the sea are still in the Book of Nature!

    Gregg

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