blog of revelations XII: dis-gression

Dear Jean-Pierre,

Back from Paris. Went to a funeral of a bishop in Notre Dame; he was confessor to Latin Quarter in the '20's, a parish priest in the occupation and finally a kind of priest trainer. The choir were student priests robed in exquisite turquoise. Your interest would be that the hand movements to direct the singers and the congregation were perfectly co-ordinated among several boy conductors. The hands looked like spiralling birds.

It was a plain used coffin. But he must have lived like a king. Nice residence, the Seine, artists, song. And other rites. Lived across the street from Shakespere and company. Lived near the Nazi gestapo headquarters. He believed, according to the presiding Cardinal, that life was a vale of tears followed by paradise.

Then up the twisting streets into a blue sky to Sacre Coeur for the choir of nuns. I was startled by the same hand movements as they sang among candles, the soloists sounding like they knew the most frightful secrets.

I went next to Montmartre graveyard to get more shots of Nijinsky's tomb for my next book's cover. Lovely grave. The sad clown sprawled on it rendered gold by hands seeking blessings is me, I sometimes feel. Foucault has an anonymous grave nearby saying he is a physiscian. Zola has an asshole looking bust. My hands for the first time don't appear in the shots. But a black graveyard cat does, ruffled by a wind til swaying. Then a blue tin sepulchre and next a row of peaked tombs including that of an exiled romanov teenage princess. There is another tomb with an inner light. The row of tombs resemble exactly the roofs of Paris I had taken earlier from the steps of Sacre Coeur on Monmartre. Snow over blue and green. Perhps this is by design of some transcendental tourist board.

I also saw an exhibit of Coptic funery items at the Louvre. Some were from the Egyptian town of Dis near which I once lived in a town sacred to Annubis, about which I have written. Pictures of Annubis and Osiris helping a Christian into the grave. Lots of sculpture of sacred hands. There is a whole cult of these. Especially of John the Baptist of course. There are significant things about those number of fingers extended where are the ones not shown. There are municipal contests about where the 'missing ones' are (as three or two are extended for certain blessings). Pieces are dis-covered. One finger is supposed to be in St. Jean De Marianne in the alps where the Savoy's come from. I saw the church there last year. John's finger is there. I saw a skull of his at the Sultan's place in Istanbul. Post mortuary dis-membership must be so dis-concerting.

But enough dis-gression.