20 nov

I was excited to get to Souillac. I had read about the abbey, and about the way St Bernard fulminated against it. Here were the distracting animals eating animals, wonderfully projected souls being detracted from heavenly bread by other human souls.
It was well carved/sculpted, even in the opinion of Bernard, but it distracted the monks from their devotion to God, according to Saint Austerity, and looking at the sculptures it is obvious he has a point.
But my goodness, what beautiful detailed sculpting. It seems obvious the master of Moissac spent some time here, or the master of Souillac spent some time in Moissac, although we haven’t seen that reconfirmed anywhere. It seems obvious. Just look at these faces

The way to Souillac was long. It is about as far north in France as we want to be these days. From here on we will drift southwards again till Christmas which we will spend at a lovely little castle, nicely arranged by my sister Hanneke, in Burgundy close to Autun.
There is a good reason to go South. Today we saw snow on the ground at Cahors, which is not good for the temperament of Merlin, nor of Julie , I might add, or myselves.
Snow indicates icyness, and Merlin is not up to that kind of fun. I had a look again at its tires today. They look like they have spent all 75.000 miles with Merlin on their way here. There are some impressive cracks, I was wondering at a gas stop were I tried to get a little bit of new air into those tires. The tires looked low, but according to the Merlin handbook I could only get them to 4,5 ar, when they showed (bare as they looked) that they had already been cranked up to 6,5 bar. Beats me, these things, but just showing some attention to the tires seemed like it helped them already; they looked much less droopy than in the morning. Wishfull looking, I suppose.
I liked Souillac. I saw St. Bernards point, but it seemed much more relevant in the 12th century than now.
What are the demons we’re fighting these days, I wondered. Or maybe the question is completely wrong and should be addressed the other way around: What saints are we aiming for.
There is no clear answer, except for sharing my disgust with the political process in the United States. Which, flawed as it is, has been able to come up with the desired outcome for the last two elections at least.
This Double Down book I am reading has been able to fascinate me, as well as disgust me. It fascinates me because it shows the professional approach to politics, that I have always liked and saw written down to perfection in the Alistair Campbell Diaries (press guy of Tony Blair).
The disgust is because idealism has been traded in for cynicism. The own message is much less important than the ability to attack the opponents gaffes or mistakes. No one gets the benefit of the doubt anymore.
The Obama as well as the Mitt Ropmney campaign spent close to 2 bln dollars ($2.000.000.000) basically attacking each other on misinterpretations of what the other one said. And that is called democracy. It is sickening really.
Just as sickening as the crazy animals eating animals and men embracing women at the abbey of Souillac. We know it is wrong, but we are still delighted by it. Which is the real sin that St. Bernard addressed.
It still has its meaning for today, but even Bernard would acknowledge that it looks a whole lot more dignified at Souillac Abbey than in a book about the American elections 0f 2012.