Traveling in a foreign country? Do what the locals do, goes the adage. One option for discerning the quotidian is a deep dig on the website of the Undersecretary for Public Affairs for the Department of State. Or you may prefer just to watch people walk. Focusing on just this one attribute - how the natives go about "walking" - will help you gauge potential culture shock during your journey. Unlike any number of other cultural markers, peripatetic behavior illustrates the spirit of a people, unconsciously. Already arrived at your destination? You can examine the headlines of local newspapers, see which books are featured in store windows, talk to a bartender, and queue up where theater performances have the longest lines. Or you can just take your ease on a park bench, and watch the natives walk by.
Of course, in some countries, walking is the primary form of transportation. Attempts at recreational walking are a sure sign of progressive dementia in third-world regions and will garner you a wide berth by the saner citizens. On the flip side - in over-developed countries - some urban walking is recreational, and some walking is transportation in its purest form. In a large urban metropolis where walkers pepper the streets and the parks in generous numbers, walking is viewed as a marker of adaptability. Walkers can easily outpace taxicabs and town-cars locked in metallic embrace at the edges of cross-hatched ("don’t block the box") intersections in Manhattan.
Truly,walking praxis is a microcosm of a country’s culture. Don't buy it? Let's take a look at walking behavior in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
In the U.S., most walking is accomplished by running, or by alternating walking and running. Or in the case of American mall walkers, by rapidly flapping ones arms so as to make the upper half on one’s body appear to be running while the bottom half tries frantically, but unsuccessfully, to keep up. Even casual Americans dress for the occasion; there is the ubiquitous pony-tail pulled through a hole in a baseball cap, flagrantly advertised name-brand sweats, and running shoes so technically advanced that they come with software. Male walkers in the U.S. tend to go it alone; in fact, they tend to rollerblade. But the women walk in multitasking pairs, combining exercise with a steady breathlessness praddle, due in even measure to exertion and the exchange of confessional narrative. There is everywhere the sense that the walk must be accomplished as quickly as possible.
There is long history and elaborate, polite protocol for most everything that is accomplished out-of-doors in the United Kingdom; the British make no exception for walking. When walking in England, one is nearly always required to be in the company of a Corgi and to carry a carved walking stick that looks like it could subdue the wildest sort of Scotsman rushing down from untamed moors. The weather is usually and steadily dismal in England, and most months call for wearing something tweedy or a Macintosh. The result is that everyone outside of London appears to be dressed for a healthy constitutional, Royals not excepted. When a Brit invites you to join them on a walk, they may use the word amble. But this innocous sounding word, means something decidedly different to the British than it does to the rest of the world. A Sunday amble can entail an earnest look-see from the top of a swelling summit. A Brit, exhibiting characteristic stoicism interlaced with bottomless cheeriness under the most adverse circumstances, will undertake a hearty scramble up cloud-hidden, craggy regions inhabited by seemingly feral sheep when the weather is the most savagely wet and windy. One can readily see that the fun of an amble, then, is the stark contrast to a walk to market.
Nearly everyone has heard that the health and figures of French women benefit immensely from all the walking they do through the course of a day. The French have an appreciation for the art or the evolution of a thing – the lecons de choses or lessons from things - and they have made an art out of walking. A walk in Paris begins with a step onto the boulevard, but soon devolves into a series of pleasant, if choreographed, interruptions through which one must steadfastly hold to the original intent of the walk. Taking a walk in one’s arrondissement offers expected encounters with the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, the cheese seller; each vendor wants to know how their item was received. How did your guests or your family receive the dinner? Did you prepare it as instructed? If your ambitions include doing a few errands while walking, you'll need to run the gauntlet quickly if you are to finish in time to cook dinner. Except that, what the French do not do is run. By all reports, the only regular joggers on the streets of Paris are the riot police and U.S. expats. Except, occasionaly in the spring, after a very cold and trying winter, protesting students can be seen running from the disciplined Parisian riot police who have duly logged their laps.
Any discussion of walking in Germany will, quite obviously, need to include the Volksmarch. Walkers formidable enough to stroll into the interior of Central Park would do well to emulate Volksmarch aficionados. Pick one big guy to carry a very long pole; decorate it, if you must. This designated leader is charged with the grave responsibility of keeping all the folk together and safe; pass the leader at your peril (He will not hesitate to use the decorated pole.). And, so that bystanders will clearly recognize the collective nature of this exercise, everyone must wear the same Steirerhut, preferably of loden green boiled wool with a small but jaunty red feather tucked under the hatband. The Germany fondness for poles – which extends to the giant (not that size matters) Maypoles erected in villages across Bavaria on May 1st – is further in evidence by the use of (Nordic) walking sticks. These otherwise intrepid marchers, click-clocking their poles along on a path as flawless as post-Zamboni rink ice, must fear some danger lurking in the Jurassic-Park environs; they shuffle along the undulating ribbon of asphalt in herds. As the marchers are out of range of careening wayward cars from the autobahn, the only other probable danger in this sparsely settled land is wild animals or lightening. Just maybe, in the short history of the Volkmarch, rabid wild boars have swarmed down from the forest edge and overrun folk who either let down their guard or were completely jolly due to the many rest stops at local breweries. I'm told there are more wild creatures in the Black Forest than just cuckoos. On the Palatine jura, marchers can see – and be seen - for virtually miles. A volksmarch leader’s pole is the tallest thing on open ground for miles. My bet is on lightening strikes. Perhaps the tradition should be relaxed a bit; that pole could be lowered and carried horizontally. Upon reflection, I wonder if the processions I've witnessed really were Volksmarchs. They reminded me quite a bit of scenes in a Monty Python film. Maybe the huddled groups were simply stealing Maypoles from neighboring villages? If that was the case, seems like it would have been more expedient to drop the log in a long bed Chevy and peel rubber.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Bill Bryson, Won't You Please Come Home - To Bavaria
By now, it is clearly evident to the reader that I was raised Protestant, or some such, because it took me so very long - despite my indefatigable quest for knowledge - to recognize the Epiphany practice of the blessing of homes and churches and just about any other structure, apparently. (In my home, we always felt that the house was blessed if we could pay the light bill – illumination being a form of grace.) So it won’t surprise you, then, to learn that I was also flummoxed by the number of churches scattered across these Bavarian Jurassic Park-like hills. The Baroque churches, which look like miniature Orthodox structures, are easy to spot as they are mostly all capped by comfortable-looking onion tops, not unlike what persists over the top of my belted jeans. The Baroque style of construction was a response to the Protestant reformation and the sense that the Church’s architecture could be more emotionally accessible to the people, (In my experience, cabbies in New York City, capably filling the silence as they crawl along 5th or Madison Avenue past St. Patrick’s, will say the very same thing) all the while conveying the wealth and power of the church. Quite effectively, like kindred minarets in the Muslim world, the church spires point heavenward while conveying a sense that Big Brother (literally, fratres) has his eye on the village imbibers from a rather terrific vantage point. Looking across the high moors that make up the Upper Palatine plateau, the only structures that seem to be as prominent as the churches are the breweries, or the places in which one consumes the products flowing out of the breweries. Now it occurs to me (as it probably did to you if your college years were similar to mine) that there is an inherent difficulty in having an equivalent number of taverns and churches in a small town. The good news, here, is that there is a church within walking distance of every neighborhood in the village, an attribute one can particularly appreciate if one’s spouse insists that one is still – after last night - not in a state to take the family car on Sunday morning. No more than about two dozen parishioners can fit in one of these neighborhood churches. An empty spot in a pew would stand out like a sore thumb and, perchance, encourage the priest to head for the doorstep of the budding scofflaw. The company you’re likely to keep while doing your part to ensure the perpetuity of German drinking songs is also the company you’ll see when you slip into your pew - or not - on Sunday. That feeling of brotherhood conveyed by the motto, Einen fur alle, alle fur einen, in letters 12 feet tall on the sides of the breweries, conceivably was fostered by the Saturday night practice of Ale fur alle und alle fur ale. The sense that “we are all in this together, boys, so get your stories straight” would not be lost on der Volk.
The villagers were not seeing me in church so, to counter this, I was doing my best to make appearances wherever there was beer. The problem was, even when direly thirsty, I couldn’t make my way to the bottom of a typical German beer glass, not to mention a decent-sized stein. My posing lacked authenticity. It was as though every passing German could tell that I would prefer a twinkling little glass of St. Germaine to a cloudy wheat beer with a banana aftertaste. I wasn’t winning friends or, for that matter, drinking buddies.
My daughter, who looks Italian or Turkish (note that Germans are not particularly fond of the Turks who flooded into their country after the war and made good livelihoods from the rebuilding efforts, or Italians - you know that story), had warned me that Germans tend to stare openly at strangers. I suspected this practice might be exaggerated in a village where everyone knew everyone else (having shared Saturday night fever, doubtless followed on Sunday morning by mildly aching heads, the suffering made slightly more acute by shoulder-to-shoulder pious kneeling). I thought I’d have a better time of it, given that, with my blue eyes and blonde hair, I look more German than most of the nationals I was seeing. But, this was not to be. I collected blank stares left and right, regardless of my open, smiling, American demeanor (which, roughly translated in Bavarian, apparently meant “simple minded”).
Historian Michael Sturmer had written that German diversity stems from differences in “bread and beer, in customs, language, and the local law.” To this list, I would add religion, and preferences regarding the local wurst. (Long-standing competition regarding regional production of a signature wurst is taken very seriously in Germany and has uncannily elevated the sausage to gourmet status.) How, then, might the Badeners or Prussians differ from the Bavarians? I wondered if this reserved (read: aloof) attitude was Bavarian or just small town? After meeting a couple from Munich on the trail to my village’s very own castle ruins, I lean toward the small town explanation. With virtually no one else on the trail (a condition I’ve come to believe is more common than not because, these are really truly just ruins, with no colorful souvenir shops or re-enactments or traditionally dressed guides), the couple from Munich ecstatically hailed me, and hearing my accent, asked me if I was from California. Not wanting to disappoint them, I said I was, and felt very much like I’d been added to a list like kids who “call” the states of license plates on a very long road trip. The couple, a mother and her apparently dutiful grown son, told me they were on a “castle tour all over,” and then enthusiastically shared with me their colorful brochure describing Hitler’s stomping grounds in a nearby town. I wondered if they would later attach little castle pins to their woolen Tyrolean hats – one for each castle visited and one very special one for the Eagles Nest. Later that afternoon, as their car careened down the cobbled street of the village – one leg of the castle tour apparently completed - they honked wildly and, upon seeing me, hollered something that sounded like “California, here we come.” From where I sat on the terrace of a local establishment, I raised my glass of (unfinished) liquid golden sunshine in return.
In most countries where there is a definite north and south sensibility, those in the other region – which is wherever you are not - seem often to be described by a string of words meant, to some degree or another, to be disparaging - pejorative terms marking them as the “other.” Though dated, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, provides a good example which is not too far from what one might find implicit even in the language of modern guidebooks. In Mann’s story, a woman born in the north marries a Bavarian but still doesn’t think much of the easy going southerners, describing those from Munich as “without dignity, morals, energy, ambition, self-respect, or good manners” in contrast to those from the north, where “people work and get things accomplished and have a purpose in life.” With these thoughts in mind, I entered the local bank after waiting for it to reopen following an hour and a half lunch break, and contemplated a crucifix on the wall just behind the bank teller. A bank employee returning a little late from lunch hurriedly greeted her co-workers. “Goose got.” “Got what?” I wondered. What could a goose get that one would think important enough to use as an excuse for being late to clock in? And everyone seemed to already know what the goose had gotten because they all just nodded at her, and looked warily at me as though I truly was the village idiot. Unbeknownst to the tellers, I had to walk past a formidable gaggle of geese on my way to the bank, and I appreciated fully that “being gotten by the geese” would not make for a very happy lunch break. The very next day, from behind her low fence along our street, an older woman looked up from her gardening and murmured the same thing - Gruß Gott – and actually smiled at me. In a month’s time, this was the first spontaneous smile that I’d received from a national, other than shopkeepers who gleefully accepted Euros from me (for a .52 on the dollar exchange rate, well they might).
Emboldened by the beer-garden familiarity of the Munich Volk encounter and figuring it worked for the bank teller, I reasoned; why not try to divert my fellow villagers with a hearty southern-style greeting. So I met the stares of the people with narrowed eyes and pinched mouths with a warm smile and a singing “Gruß Gott!” Religious folks everywhere tend to be a bit superstitious, presumably covering their bases - just in case. To ignore someone saying “God bless you” might be living just a tad too close to the edge. Whether because of reflex or a reluctance to invoke dark spirits, villagers on the street greeted me in return. Perhaps I could not so easily unloose my casual American joie de vivre in northern Germany, however, where there are fewer Catholics. Saying “God greet you” to a Berliner is likely to elicit an amused “Not too soon, I hope!”
The villagers were not seeing me in church so, to counter this, I was doing my best to make appearances wherever there was beer. The problem was, even when direly thirsty, I couldn’t make my way to the bottom of a typical German beer glass, not to mention a decent-sized stein. My posing lacked authenticity. It was as though every passing German could tell that I would prefer a twinkling little glass of St. Germaine to a cloudy wheat beer with a banana aftertaste. I wasn’t winning friends or, for that matter, drinking buddies.
My daughter, who looks Italian or Turkish (note that Germans are not particularly fond of the Turks who flooded into their country after the war and made good livelihoods from the rebuilding efforts, or Italians - you know that story), had warned me that Germans tend to stare openly at strangers. I suspected this practice might be exaggerated in a village where everyone knew everyone else (having shared Saturday night fever, doubtless followed on Sunday morning by mildly aching heads, the suffering made slightly more acute by shoulder-to-shoulder pious kneeling). I thought I’d have a better time of it, given that, with my blue eyes and blonde hair, I look more German than most of the nationals I was seeing. But, this was not to be. I collected blank stares left and right, regardless of my open, smiling, American demeanor (which, roughly translated in Bavarian, apparently meant “simple minded”).
Historian Michael Sturmer had written that German diversity stems from differences in “bread and beer, in customs, language, and the local law.” To this list, I would add religion, and preferences regarding the local wurst. (Long-standing competition regarding regional production of a signature wurst is taken very seriously in Germany and has uncannily elevated the sausage to gourmet status.) How, then, might the Badeners or Prussians differ from the Bavarians? I wondered if this reserved (read: aloof) attitude was Bavarian or just small town? After meeting a couple from Munich on the trail to my village’s very own castle ruins, I lean toward the small town explanation. With virtually no one else on the trail (a condition I’ve come to believe is more common than not because, these are really truly just ruins, with no colorful souvenir shops or re-enactments or traditionally dressed guides), the couple from Munich ecstatically hailed me, and hearing my accent, asked me if I was from California. Not wanting to disappoint them, I said I was, and felt very much like I’d been added to a list like kids who “call” the states of license plates on a very long road trip. The couple, a mother and her apparently dutiful grown son, told me they were on a “castle tour all over,” and then enthusiastically shared with me their colorful brochure describing Hitler’s stomping grounds in a nearby town. I wondered if they would later attach little castle pins to their woolen Tyrolean hats – one for each castle visited and one very special one for the Eagles Nest. Later that afternoon, as their car careened down the cobbled street of the village – one leg of the castle tour apparently completed - they honked wildly and, upon seeing me, hollered something that sounded like “California, here we come.” From where I sat on the terrace of a local establishment, I raised my glass of (unfinished) liquid golden sunshine in return.
In most countries where there is a definite north and south sensibility, those in the other region – which is wherever you are not - seem often to be described by a string of words meant, to some degree or another, to be disparaging - pejorative terms marking them as the “other.” Though dated, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, provides a good example which is not too far from what one might find implicit even in the language of modern guidebooks. In Mann’s story, a woman born in the north marries a Bavarian but still doesn’t think much of the easy going southerners, describing those from Munich as “without dignity, morals, energy, ambition, self-respect, or good manners” in contrast to those from the north, where “people work and get things accomplished and have a purpose in life.” With these thoughts in mind, I entered the local bank after waiting for it to reopen following an hour and a half lunch break, and contemplated a crucifix on the wall just behind the bank teller. A bank employee returning a little late from lunch hurriedly greeted her co-workers. “Goose got.” “Got what?” I wondered. What could a goose get that one would think important enough to use as an excuse for being late to clock in? And everyone seemed to already know what the goose had gotten because they all just nodded at her, and looked warily at me as though I truly was the village idiot. Unbeknownst to the tellers, I had to walk past a formidable gaggle of geese on my way to the bank, and I appreciated fully that “being gotten by the geese” would not make for a very happy lunch break. The very next day, from behind her low fence along our street, an older woman looked up from her gardening and murmured the same thing - Gruß Gott – and actually smiled at me. In a month’s time, this was the first spontaneous smile that I’d received from a national, other than shopkeepers who gleefully accepted Euros from me (for a .52 on the dollar exchange rate, well they might).
Emboldened by the beer-garden familiarity of the Munich Volk encounter and figuring it worked for the bank teller, I reasoned; why not try to divert my fellow villagers with a hearty southern-style greeting. So I met the stares of the people with narrowed eyes and pinched mouths with a warm smile and a singing “Gruß Gott!” Religious folks everywhere tend to be a bit superstitious, presumably covering their bases - just in case. To ignore someone saying “God bless you” might be living just a tad too close to the edge. Whether because of reflex or a reluctance to invoke dark spirits, villagers on the street greeted me in return. Perhaps I could not so easily unloose my casual American joie de vivre in northern Germany, however, where there are fewer Catholics. Saying “God greet you” to a Berliner is likely to elicit an amused “Not too soon, I hope!”
Decoding Bavaria
Had it not been very late on a moonless night when I stepped across the threshold at the Bavarian house for the first time, I know I would not have missed the writing in chalk over the door. As it were, I did not truly see the outside of the house until the next day, when I ventured out, where I stood relishing the warmth of the sun and enthusiastically inhaling air freshly scrubbed by a nighttime storm from the Alps. After testing my legs during a brief walk on the cobbled streets of the Markt, I found my way back to the house and where I came to an abrupt halt.
For many people, white chalk conveys happy thoughts. Childishly drawn hop-scotch boxes. Sidewalk chalk art contests. Enticing specials of the day written in tidy script on sandwich boards in front of quaint restaurants. At the right age, getting to be the envied cleaner of a classroom chalkboard. The white cliffs of Dover. Other chalky memories may not be so pleasant. What university freshman – trying to blend like a chameleon into the dark oak seats of an ancient auditorium – has not suffered while a hard-of-hearing professor nearing emeritus status inadvertently drew a piece of chalk across a slate surface at the just the perfect angle to create an agonizing screech? Or, for instance, who has not come suddenly upon a star and circle pentacle sign surreptitiously scrawled behind the bathroom door when visiting a relative? Well then, lucky you.
Staring at the chalky writing over the door, my first thought was to wonder who had lived in the house before we moved in. My second thought was to wonder if there were any lingering, shall we say, emanations.
+
20 + C + M + B + 09
Probably an algorithm some carpenter feared he’d forget lest he write it down immediately. Like the phone number that you repeat over and over until, at last, you find paper and pencil. Harmless. Endearing, even, as only the absent-minded sometimes are. Must write it down. Imagine Mr. Magoo with Altzeimer’s.
The next day, I cheerily followed the winding streets into the Altstadt, the old town. My brain eventually grew used to the colorful house-fronts edging the narrow streets and the lexicon of hanging wrought-iron signs indicating the shop trades. The gradual familiarity let me begin to pick out details, like what happens when you twist your camera lens aperture for a close up. Emulating Hansel & Gretel deliriously following their breadcrumbs, I began to pick out chalk letters and numbers everywhere in the village. Here, written across the middle of the Bäckerei (bakery) door. There, written on the top rail over the door to Apotheke, the drugstore. And at my feet, on a polished granite lintel placed incongruently among the headstones-to-be-engraved at the stone memorial workshop, apparently awaiting eventual placement in some prestigious - or sanctified - spot.
In my jet-lagged clarity, I decided the numbers must be part of a surveying project. My truly flimsy theory fell away when I saw that the very same number 20 + C + M + B + 09 appeared everywhere in the tiny town. After a few days of sleuthing, I had ranged further afield and saw that only the first number changed, if that. And in the dusky depths of a restored cathedral, I discovered the chalk inscription on an interior door. Okay, so not-a-surveyor’s-mark.
A few cursory search attempts on my laptop didn’t solve the mystery. I had begun to feel like the Klinsky family in Manhattan whose playful architect, Eric Clough, unbeknownst to them, embedded a scavenger hunt into his renovation of their 5th Avenue apartment. For months, the bemused family stumbled on ciphers, secret doors, mazes, puzzles, and games until the creative (and, let’s guess, well entertained) architect at last owned up. Still bedeviled, I tried yet another internet search; my life was illuminated by Flickr and I fell to my knees in front of a posted photo of a priest blessing a house - in Bavaria, no less. The priest had, the caption read, just used the blessed chalk (Who knew?) to write an inscription intended to bless all those who entered and departed through the door. God bless Google.
Like in any good code, the letters in the inscription can have more than one meaning. I learned that the letters C, M, and B are the initials of the traditional names of the Three Magi: Caspar, Melchoir, & Belthasar, and also abbreviate the Latin words Christus mansionem benedicat, which means “May Christ bless the house.” The plus signs are intended to be crosses representing the blood of Christ and the holiness of the magi. So far, we have C + M + B. This christening of the home occurs during the month of January and is a nod to the Roman God Janus, whom some of you may recall is the doorkeeper to Heaven and the beginning and end of things (quite a lot to be responsible for, at the end of the day - or the end of time, whichever came first for Janus). The initial number indicates the day in January when the blessing was given. The ending number is the year which, given that the inscription is written in chalk, hardly seems necessary. Since I never saw any cross-outs of previous years, it seems reasonable that at some point, probably on the German equivalent of Boxing Day, that the evergreen swags hanging over front doors come down, and a very special (perhaps even blessed) sponge (one might guess, sated with Holy Water) is used to make a clean slate, ready, as it were, for the new year’s Epiphany inscription. Last - and this may help me overcome any disfavor I feel toward chalk - the inscription, in its entirety 20 + C + M + B + 09, is written in chalk since chalk - being of the earth - represents Christ in human form. This last part probably accounts for the additional cross sometimes written over the letter M - a crowning cross, it would seem.
Upon reflection, given the range of house blessings practiced the world over, I considered myself lucky. And I thought that the Klinskys should be grateful, too, that the distinguished Mr. Clough was not enamored with the Moroccan manner of house blessings, whereupon small animals are ritually sacrificed and walled up in the new construction. Singularly, such a practice could hasten the speed (given most months in Morocco can be quite warm) at which an impromptu house-warming scavenger hunt shapes up.
For many people, white chalk conveys happy thoughts. Childishly drawn hop-scotch boxes. Sidewalk chalk art contests. Enticing specials of the day written in tidy script on sandwich boards in front of quaint restaurants. At the right age, getting to be the envied cleaner of a classroom chalkboard. The white cliffs of Dover. Other chalky memories may not be so pleasant. What university freshman – trying to blend like a chameleon into the dark oak seats of an ancient auditorium – has not suffered while a hard-of-hearing professor nearing emeritus status inadvertently drew a piece of chalk across a slate surface at the just the perfect angle to create an agonizing screech? Or, for instance, who has not come suddenly upon a star and circle pentacle sign surreptitiously scrawled behind the bathroom door when visiting a relative? Well then, lucky you.
Staring at the chalky writing over the door, my first thought was to wonder who had lived in the house before we moved in. My second thought was to wonder if there were any lingering, shall we say, emanations.
+
20 + C + M + B + 09
Probably an algorithm some carpenter feared he’d forget lest he write it down immediately. Like the phone number that you repeat over and over until, at last, you find paper and pencil. Harmless. Endearing, even, as only the absent-minded sometimes are. Must write it down. Imagine Mr. Magoo with Altzeimer’s.
The next day, I cheerily followed the winding streets into the Altstadt, the old town. My brain eventually grew used to the colorful house-fronts edging the narrow streets and the lexicon of hanging wrought-iron signs indicating the shop trades. The gradual familiarity let me begin to pick out details, like what happens when you twist your camera lens aperture for a close up. Emulating Hansel & Gretel deliriously following their breadcrumbs, I began to pick out chalk letters and numbers everywhere in the village. Here, written across the middle of the Bäckerei (bakery) door. There, written on the top rail over the door to Apotheke, the drugstore. And at my feet, on a polished granite lintel placed incongruently among the headstones-to-be-engraved at the stone memorial workshop, apparently awaiting eventual placement in some prestigious - or sanctified - spot.
In my jet-lagged clarity, I decided the numbers must be part of a surveying project. My truly flimsy theory fell away when I saw that the very same number 20 + C + M + B + 09 appeared everywhere in the tiny town. After a few days of sleuthing, I had ranged further afield and saw that only the first number changed, if that. And in the dusky depths of a restored cathedral, I discovered the chalk inscription on an interior door. Okay, so not-a-surveyor’s-mark.
A few cursory search attempts on my laptop didn’t solve the mystery. I had begun to feel like the Klinsky family in Manhattan whose playful architect, Eric Clough, unbeknownst to them, embedded a scavenger hunt into his renovation of their 5th Avenue apartment. For months, the bemused family stumbled on ciphers, secret doors, mazes, puzzles, and games until the creative (and, let’s guess, well entertained) architect at last owned up. Still bedeviled, I tried yet another internet search; my life was illuminated by Flickr and I fell to my knees in front of a posted photo of a priest blessing a house - in Bavaria, no less. The priest had, the caption read, just used the blessed chalk (Who knew?) to write an inscription intended to bless all those who entered and departed through the door. God bless Google.
Like in any good code, the letters in the inscription can have more than one meaning. I learned that the letters C, M, and B are the initials of the traditional names of the Three Magi: Caspar, Melchoir, & Belthasar, and also abbreviate the Latin words Christus mansionem benedicat, which means “May Christ bless the house.” The plus signs are intended to be crosses representing the blood of Christ and the holiness of the magi. So far, we have C + M + B. This christening of the home occurs during the month of January and is a nod to the Roman God Janus, whom some of you may recall is the doorkeeper to Heaven and the beginning and end of things (quite a lot to be responsible for, at the end of the day - or the end of time, whichever came first for Janus). The initial number indicates the day in January when the blessing was given. The ending number is the year which, given that the inscription is written in chalk, hardly seems necessary. Since I never saw any cross-outs of previous years, it seems reasonable that at some point, probably on the German equivalent of Boxing Day, that the evergreen swags hanging over front doors come down, and a very special (perhaps even blessed) sponge (one might guess, sated with Holy Water) is used to make a clean slate, ready, as it were, for the new year’s Epiphany inscription. Last - and this may help me overcome any disfavor I feel toward chalk - the inscription, in its entirety 20 + C + M + B + 09, is written in chalk since chalk - being of the earth - represents Christ in human form. This last part probably accounts for the additional cross sometimes written over the letter M - a crowning cross, it would seem.
Upon reflection, given the range of house blessings practiced the world over, I considered myself lucky. And I thought that the Klinskys should be grateful, too, that the distinguished Mr. Clough was not enamored with the Moroccan manner of house blessings, whereupon small animals are ritually sacrificed and walled up in the new construction. Singularly, such a practice could hasten the speed (given most months in Morocco can be quite warm) at which an impromptu house-warming scavenger hunt shapes up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
