FINAL POST OF THE JOURNEY

I have twenty-four hours left.
I feel as though I am balanced on a threshold, and 
that what I am stepping into is still more of the unknown.
There will be, of course, the sweetly familiar.
My beloved son.
My home.
My neighbours.
My good, good friends.
But there will also be the new and different.  And I
can't quite imagine how that will feel, or what it will
look like.
I truly have been on a journey.  A long and interesting
outer journey, covering many many miles, which has
restored my energy and satisfied the restlessness.  
And a profound inner journey as well, with unexpected
revelations, and new companions.
I have one more photo to share.  
The young woman walking away with her bike is 
my precious Celia.  

Something is coming to an end.  And something else is
beginning.  The ceaseless ebb and flow of our lives.

It's unlikely that I will add any more to this blog.
I am thankful to you for reading it, for staying in touch
with where I have been.
With where I am.
Which is here.
Here I Am.
Adieu.

MONTREAL

Well, I have been back on Canadian ground for nearly
2 weeks.  I am in Montreal, staying in a shabby little
apartment close to where Celia lives.  On Friday I go
back to stay with my sis until I leave for Vancouver
on Monday.
It's been a strange time.  In-between.  I knew I wanted
to have a transition, and to see Celia and my sister,
as well as any other family and friends who could 
squeeze in a visit.  I wanted more time to be.  To BE.  
To be here, to be unemployed, to be "idle and blessed" 
as Mary Oliver says.
Here are some photos of things I have seen and done
while here.

My door is the one right in the centre of the picture, that blue one on a diagonal.
I'm in one of the older parts of the city - it's the Plateau, but it's not all that
trendy, and there are still Portuguese men arguing in the depanneur, and old
European women dressed all in black, and it's quiet and a little messy.

We've had a few gorgeous late autumn days, and this was one
of them.  I walked partway up the mountain (ha! mountain!)
along with many other folks, runners, and parents with kids,
and dog-walkers....

One of Montreal's alleyways...this one is particularly clean
and empty.  Sometimes they are filled with garbage trucks and
people trying to get past in their cars, honking, and children
riding bikes and people looking for good stuff in the garbage...

On Saturday my brother came down from Ottawa and
we went to the Musee de Beaux Arts.  There are no
rules about cell phones or photos - except for some of
the paintings which have "No Photographs" beside
them.  So, I took some of things that particularly 
appealed to me.

This is the entrance to the old part of the Musee.  The yellow and red piece on the steps
is glass, and I was trying to find out the name of the artist, but haven't been able to.
Up close, it looks like those long balloons that balloon artists make into animals.

I took some photos in the Warhol exhibit, and in other 
exhibits which my brother and I visited, which I'll post
below, but didn't take any when I went back yesterday and
wandered through the van Gogh and Kandinsky exhibit.  I
was too overwhelmed by all the people, and by the 
awesome experience of being in the presence of these 
beautiful and powerful pieces of art.

The Warhol exhibit was of his artwork in advertising posters
and magazine illustrations, not
his paintings - I wondered why I didn't see the famous
Campbell's soup cans, but this was why!

The reason I love this one is because of what it says:
Conspiracy means to breathe together.

Oh, I did take one yesterday - this provocative Picasso.

My brother and I loved this guy's comb-over....

The light in this painting was phenomenal.

I love sculpture.  Here are a few....

And finally, on my way to the bus.....

LAST NIGHT, LAST MORNING....

On my last night in Switzerland, I took my dear
friends Irene and Res out for dinner.  My apartment
was part of their house, just upstairs, and they had 
been the most wonderful friends, neighbours and 
landlords you could wish for.  When I said I wanted
to take them out for dinner, they suggested a place 
in Zurich, a typical Swiss place, in the old town.
It's called the Oepfelchammer, and is a very, very
old building.  I think Irene told me it was from the
1200's, or maybe even older!!  The wooden beams
and the low ceilings and the cramped room where
we sat had contained so much!  

The perspective is a bit off, his left hand is not really that big!  We had such a good time, and
the food was delicious.  The menu is considered to be "traditional" and our waiter was possibly one of the most bizarre looking men I have ever seen, with long curly
white hair and a waxed moustache about six inches wide, and the face of a gnome.  He was
unquestionably the boss of the place.
We had the strange experience of being here the same night as
a group of "singing students".  No, not students of music, but students who are
training to be engineers, or lawyers, who go to this restaurant and eat and drink (lots), and
who have a bizarre set of rituals and traditions which include singing very old songs, in harmony,
with no accompaniment, when one or the other is inspired to sing....

I was sad to leave the peaceful, beautiful and deeply 
nourishing life I had been living in Kusnacht.  My last 
morning, before leaving to catch the train to Paris, was 
a beautiful one, and I took this final photograph sitting at 
my gorgeous big work table where I had spent so many 
hours, reading, researching and just staring out the window...

VISITING THE HOUSE OF CG JUNG

Before leaving Kusnacht, I had the opportunity to visit
the house of CG Jung, where he lived with his wife and
five children from 1909 until he died in 1961.  Here he
did some of his writing, as well as working with his
clients (analysands).  From what I was told, he often
sat in the garden during his sessions, or would go out
on the lake in his boat with a client, as well as using
a more traditional consulting room.
One of the many things that makes Carl Jung unique
in the field of psychology is the unorthodoxy of his
practices.  Therapists and analysts today are warned
about legal boundaries, and in so many respects are
forced to work within a strictly impersonal framework.
Jung believed that healing lay in developing a deeply
human relationship between analyst and analysand.
I was moved to walk in the rooms where he worked
for so many thousands of hours with his own psyche,
and with the dreams and individuation of so many, 
many patients. 

This is the view of the house that one has from the Seestrasse.
I had walked by the house many times, but this time I was
able to go up this walkway.

At the doorway....

Just above the door reads: Vocatus atque non vocatus non vocatus deus aderit
"Called or not called, the god will be there"

This is Jung's library.  One is discouraged from taking photos of the books themselves,
but otherwise it's okay.  That is a painting of Jung above the couch - not likely that
it hung there in his lifetime! and to the left is, I believe, a portrait of Freud.

On the mantlepiece above the fireplace, two skulls: one is a human skull, the other the skull of an ape.  Which is which?

Jung's study, windows looking north

Standing with my back to the lake, looking back at the house.
My friend sitting on the stone wall...

The garden at the side of the house....

One of Jung's carvings - it was called Atmavictu:
breath of life

Another view of the property

A view of the lake from his back garden

Leaving....

Last thing I saw....

DAY 2 IN MILANO

We returned to the Duomo on Saturday, to find a 
special Mass taking place, with a whole procession
of priests and the Archbishop of Milan - a lot of old
men - officiating.  The main body of the church was
roped off, as the Mass was being broadcast on T.V.
and radio.  I think they were celebrating the 
completion of yet more improvements/restorations
to the cathedral.
We came across this image of the Madonna, which
is very unusual because it shows her breastfeeding
Jesus.  Imagine the Blessed Virgin Mary, showing a
breast!  I thought it was remarkable, and somehow
reminded me of the link between Chrisianity and the
old religions, when women and sexuality and birth
were not split off and consigned to the dark and to
the devil.

After seeing what we could of the cathedral, we went
down some steps to the Batistero - the ancient Baptistry
below.  It was constructed in the 4th Century, and 
apparently was the site of St. Augustine's baptism in
the year 387.  It was awe-inspiring to be among those
ancient walls, to see the 8-sided massive bath where the 
baptisms took place, and to be able to reach out and 
touch bricks that were over 1,500 years old.  It had
a more sacred and holy atmosphere than the grand
and glorious cathedral overhead.

After that, we had to go and sit with coffee, to let it
all settle, and to make the adjustment to the busy
"upper" world.  And it was very busy!!  Milano on 
a Saturday is the place to be, apparently.  We walked,
going in and out of shops, or looking in the windows of
the impossibly expensive ones.  Here are some pictures
and a short video of Saturday in Milano.

A close-up of the lion shows pigeons snuggling on its paws,
and there is one just under his chin.  Not something he would
allow if he were a living, breathing creature.  Damn pigeons.

The famous Teatro La Scala....

The marble floor of the famous shopping area, the Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele, apparently the world's oldest shopping "mall" 

Here it is, just one small perspective....

Didn't even look in the window of this one...

I'm not sure if this video will work...but giving it a try.  These must be brothers....

We thought these two were lovely.  She reminded me
of the Queen - with a rather crabby husband...

And, finally, this vision through the window.  What about those shoes?

By the time we'd walked and eaten and shopped and 
gawked, we were completely exhausted, and made our
way to the train station to get the train back to Zurich.
I slept 11 hours that night....

DAY 1 IN MILANO

The first thing we did was to take a taxi to our 
hotel, the Hotel Ambasciatori.  I loved saying 
the name!  Then we walked from there to the 
church of Santa Maria della Grazie, 
where we saw da Vinci's painting of The Last
Supper.  This is the church, built in the 1400's, 
ordered by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza.

The painting is done right on the interior wall,
and the viewing is strictly regulated because it 
is so susceptible to damage by moisture.  The 
image is breathtaking.  da Vinci painted the
moment as he imagined it when Christ said to
his Apostles, "Verily, this night one of you will
betray me."  Each of the Apostles is depicted
with his personal reaction to this statement, and
part of their individual expressions is the position
of their hands, which tell a whole story themselves.
I find it incredible that the "Apostle" to the right
of Jesus is stubbornly labelled as John, when it
is so evident that is it a woman, and commonly
identified as Mary Magdalena.

At some point on our wandering through Milan,
or at least through the small area near the hotel
and Il Duomo, we passed the Stock Exchange, with
this bizarre sculpture directly across the street.

And, on the steps of the Stock Exchange, this vision
of an Italian stockbroker being gazed upon by the 
stone woman.

Later in the afternoon, we climbed the stairs of the
Duomo di Milano, the Gothic cathedral which is the 
fifth largest in the world, and which took nearly 600
years to complete.  It is overpoweringly beautiful.
Here are some photos from the approach to the 
cathedral, to different points along the climb up.

Unlike the usual Jesus, this is a statue of Mary, known as the
Madonnina, erected in 1762.  By tradition, no building in Milan
is higher than the Madonnina, so when two buildings were
constructed in 1950 and in 2010 which were taller, they had
replicas of the Madonnina set on top, so she is still the highest point
in the city.

I don't know who this is, but he's standing on an awful lot of women.

And we finally got to the very top….

That night, after collapsing back at the hotel for awhile,
we went out for a fabulous dinner at one of the outdoor
restaurants close by.  I had a seafood pasta, and on top
is a sea urchin - which I've never had before.  Salty and
delicious!

Lots of wine, and wayyy too much to eat, and the end of
a fabulous day….