constipated.
Too much sausage?
Uncomfortable feeling, but this is Germany.
Nevertheless, decided to take a boat cruise on the Rhine to see the castles,
most of which are only what we would call a mansion.
Once fortresses to keep out invaders, they are now restaurants and hotels inviting us in.
In the end, being open is more powerful, and remunerative, than closing out.
How long will there be fences to separate one people from another?
What does it take to drop the fences?
Europe after millenia of tribal fighting has dropped most of its fences. Why?
Do nations also develop frontal lobes? Seems to take longer than in individuals.
Rode the boat to Koblenz,
or
Bonn,
or maybe as far as
Cologne (Köln).
There I visited the cathedral with the other 20,000 daily souls.
Castles keep us out, but cathedrals capture us in their wombs of light.
We imagine castles containing labyrinths of small dark rooms with narrow windows for shooting arrows and cannons at the barbarian hoards;
whereas, cathedrals are one large open space surrounding us, protecting us, with broad windows suckling shafts of sun.
Both architectures existed side by side in the medieval mind,
and we have inherited them as expressed clearly by our political parties,
one of of which represents our fears, the other our hopes.
Every healthy animal and society needs both, but how much of each is always the question.
At Emmerich,
I may have stopped to rest awhile,
but I entered the
Netherlands
before the day was done, and received a
passport stamp
at Arnhem.
Probably slept on train through
Utrecht
on the way to
Amsterdam.
