What draws me to travel, even though I don't like feeling like a tourist or being in crowds? All I can say is that a convergence happens----feelings, events, facts, dreams begin to add up and create, puzzle-like, a whole that urges me on.For example, this is a picture I took a couple of weeks ago of Mont Saint Michel, a French monestary. When I was 22, just out of college, I briefly worked for an architect in Baton Rouge, John Desmond, who offered me a choice of some of his drawings before I left, and I chose two for myself----of Mont Saint Michel and another monestary in France. My mother had them framed for me, and they've been hanging in my various abodes ever since.
And the image of Mont Saint Michel has appeared throughout my life, in the film MINDWALK, for example, which I bought back in the 80s and loved. Later, one of my friends from work and her husband, an architect, visited our home in Louisiana, and they brought along two friends, one of whom was John Desmond's son, and it pleased him to see his dad's drawings on our wall.
When I decided to go to France, in the back of my mind was an intention to see Mont Saint Michel, even though the original trip was in southern France, and it is located in the north. The original trip fell through, but since I'd sold my engagement ring to pay for the trip and already had paid my airfare, I worked up another trip, and on this one, my intentions became real. In my travels around this area, I even stopped to photograph a sign (though I didn't follow it) with my maiden name on it because I'd been thinking lately about how I know nothing about my father's side of the family. How odd that I should pass this sign---- this village was not on any map I held. The sign merely popped up on my path, reminding me of the bizarre synchronicities that can occur when we wander. My father's family probably came over from France as various outlaws (that word just fits for my dad, even though he was in the Air Force and became a university teacher) to populate the Louisiana Purchase.
