Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and a Bit of French Diplomacy

About a month ago twelve of us took a trip down to Paris, France for a few days. No, there was not a sponsor on this trip. There were twelve, inexperienced, twenty-year-olds exploring the streets of Paris. It was a recipe for, well, anything. We saw it all. We gazed out of the top of the Eiffel Tower. We delved into the catacombs and saw more dead bodies than I thought was possible to stuff into such a confined place, and here's the kicker. There were no guardrails, or guards for that matter, separating us from the skeletal remains. Anybody could just reach and and touch the piles of bones that were so ornately stacked that they reminded me of a sick form of modern art. I saw the grave of Victor Hugo in the Pantheon, which, if you know me at all, is perhaps my favorite author. I was as giddy as any literature nerd could be. The story, however, has nothing to do with the sites we saw. The story is in our mode of travel. My good friend, Nathan Ashlock, found a round trip bus ticket for £40, which is around $70. If you recall your high school geography, you must be realizing that this defies all logic. There's a body of water known as the English Channel that separates the two nations. The only way to traverse the distance outside of flying or by a boat is the Chunnel. The Chunnel is an underwater railway that bridges the gap between the coasts. We assumed, based on the information given to us by our professor, that we would take the bus onto the ferry and continue our journey into Paris. You know what they say about assuming? Sometime you're wrong. We arrived at a train station and literally drove our bus into a tin can. There was no more than five inches between the wall of the train and our bus. A metal door slammed behind us, enclosing us into an incredibly confined place. We could not exit the bus. I'm not claustrophobic, but I developed a severe case of it on this bus. It was very dark. The bus was shut off because of carbon monoxide poisoning, inevitably shutting of the air-conditioning. It was sweltering, and I was wearing a couple layers because it was going to be cold in France. Needless to say the sweat glands I've inherited from my father kicked in. The lady sitting next to me on the bus only spoke French, but I have an idea of what she was saying. I won't repeat what I think is the correct interpretation because my mother reads this blog (hey mom). The ride was surreal. The lights went out, and the train just started to rock back and forth. There were no windows. The only way I can describe it is through that Jurassic Park game at Gatti's. You know the one where you close the curtains and shoot dinosaurs with small handguns while the tiny car rocks back and forth. Those were the days. The oven known as our bus finally arrived in France at 6 in the morning. Paris made that incredibly long, hot bus trip worth it. We had a blast and saw everything that Paris had to offer. On the last night of our trip, after we had gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower, we were riding the subway back to our hostel when we bumped into a group of extremely drunk French youths. They were singing French songs out of tune at the top of their lungs. It was absolutely hysterical. They shouted at one of my friends unintelligibly, but in a friendly way. When it started to quiet down my good friend Patrick Louden, in a moment of comedic genius, began singing Frère Jacques. The French youths lit up and began to sing with the fervor of fifty men. The Americans and the French all joined into together, much to the annoyance of the rest of the car. Then they asked us to sing our national anthem. Our group was full of American Pride. Team USA all the way. We belted it. I kid you not there were French tears in the audience. As we reached the climax of the song the most inebriated member of the French delegates approached Caleb, another of my friends on the trip, hugged him, and lifted him into the air nearly ramming his head into the ceiling. He went around and hugged most of the American group. I realized then and there that we had solidified the French-American alliance for the rest of time. It was a beautiful moment. The French diplomats disembarked before we did, but the man who had given us all hugs kissed the window as the doors shut and shouted, "I love America!" Now all of this must sound interesting, but the really intense part of our journey had yet to begin. We had been discussing the idea of tipping points earlier in the trip. So far, on every trip, there's one moment we can point back to where everything flips on its head. If the trip has been miserable, all of the sudden the sun will be shining. If the trip has been all we could have dreamed of it was about to turn nasty. Our bus left at midmorning the next day. It shouldn't have been a problem seeing as how we left three hours before we were supposed to arrive, except for one glaring obstacle. We were a group of alpha males who enjoyed delegating minor responsibilities to one another without ever confirming if somebody had verified the details. We assumed that the bus would be picking us up where it had dropped us off. I've already explained what assuming can sometimes lead to. This was our tipping point, and, just to remind you, Paris had been awesome. In fact the bus was picking us up a solid forty minutes from where it had dropped us off. Needless to say we weren't going to make it. Thus began the frantic search for alternate means of travel. We were near the airport and contemplated taking a flight until we saw the prices. Bill Gates would've shuddered. While one group stayed to watch the luggage Tanner and I went to check on train prices as well as tickets for a different airline. One of the information workers told us we could all get tickets for reasonable prices, but she had typed in the wrong date. Those tickets were for a month after we needed the tickets. There was a train that was leaving in an hour that would beat our bus that had left already by an astounding margin. "What a stroke of luck?" I thought. There was a theme that ran throughout this trip, and that was that I was wrong on most accounts. It was true in this instance as well. The train was more expensive than the plane. It appeared that we were going to be stuck in Paris until the next morning when the same bus would be leaving at the same time from the location we should've been at earlier that morning. We decided to take the risk and go to where we should've been several hours earlier. The bus took us so far outside of central Paris I thought we'd crossed into another country. We finally arrived at the mysterious location forty minutes from where the bus had dropped us off three days earlier. This was the second tipping point. We trudged into the ticket office lugging our heavy backpacks. We were all on edge, just waiting for someone to push us to the breaking point. We were standing in a long line with our tickets in hand hoping that we could get a refund of some kind, but with the way the trip was going it seemed unlikely. Then, out of nowhere, the most unlikely of heroes stepped up to the batters box and knocked one out of the park. Robbyne Harris somehow jumped the queue to the front of a different ticket office. After a short discussion she turned and beamed at us. There was a bus leaving in ten minutes for London. Since we had already bought tickets for that day all we had to do was pay ten euros, which was chump change compared to what we thought the damage would be. We managed to get on that bus in less than ten minutes. We were on our way back home. While there was much rejoicing over our serendipity, we were still dreading the sardine can we had to ride back to London. However, the ball was not done rolling in our direction. We didn't have to ride the tiny train back. We ended up on the ferry. We watched from the boat as the sun set over the English horizon. It was gorgeous. The ferry was like a cruise ship, complete with a food court. I gorged myself in celebration. We finally made it back to Oxford. We were exhausted, but home. In the midst of all the chaos I learned two things: never assume, and sometimes it's okay to ask for directions... as long as you have a woman do it.

Looking At and Looking Along

C.S. Lewis describes the experience of looking at a beam of light in a dark toolshed. He notes that you can see the shape and brightness as the light reflects of the dust particles floating in the air. After reflecting on the experience of objectively observing the beam, he then steps into the light and looks along it. As the light shines in his eyes he can see out a window. The tall trees and green grass are suddenly visible. The sun shines bright in a clear blue sky as wisps of clouds dance around it. While the light allows him to see out the window, he can no longer see the beam itself.

Lewis is commenting on the paradox of experience. No one can objectively look at joy while he is experiencing joy. No one can observe sorrow while weeping. In his essay Lewis says, "If only my tooth would stop aching so I could write about pain." Observing and writing about experiences is very difficult because no one can capture the true sensation of all that is happening. There is something lost in the translation of being there, to trying to describe the sensation of being there. Gazing backwards and joy, sorrow, pain, or any other sensation, can't be adequately captured with memory and certainly not with words. Looking at a light, while interesting, can never be the same as looking along the light.

This past weekend my friends and I took a trip down to foggy London town. One evening we decided to go to Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. I could spend hours describing the intricately carved statues and moldings that permeated the towering structure. I could strain the English language to attempt to give you the experience of gazing up at murals so real and so poignant. I could search for hours for adjectives to adequately describe the magnitude of the structure, but even more shocking was the walls that were covered with beautiful paintings showing scenes of the Bible in an artistic perspective. One could sit and gaze for an endless amount of time and still miss a detail of a painting that made it all the more beautiful. I could attempt to string together a list of adjectives to describe the experience of sitting in an ancient, wooden chair and listening with eyes closed to the choir weaving melodies so flawlessly it seemed to come as natural as breathing. Sound echoed of the walls of the tower mixing songs of praise with glorious murals devoted to Christ welding both sound and sight into a worship experience that overwhelmed the senses. I could attempt to do all these things, but there is no way to describe the experience. There is a giant chasm between looking at and looking along a beam of light.