Pilgrimage Pt2.

I've been to this station before but I didn't see it. I was blind. Really a different era. I'm not blind anymore. No rushing threatened by my own ignorance. The cigar shaped building of Terminal Two is a UFO north east of gay Paris.

Vending machines are filled with the same Mars Confectionary. Selecta bonfide universal.

We just got going on the flight when I opened the page on "On The Road". I had read a short introductory section or two then I felt the pressure of our steady descent towards the out house that is Terminal Trois CDG. Reminds me of Cairns or someother non-existing frontier zone. Airports, unlike train stations, make me feel I list sinking for lacking both a head or a soul.

I spot a Relay I last saw that at Bermondsey Underground some years ago. It sells all the magazines a rampant person without a head or soul could flick through. Magazines are a 21st Century reflection of the early 20th Century trapped forever chained to the 20s consumer culture begot and varacious since the decline of the cold war. I thought to find Paris still beating French blood, but now it stinks of globalised anonimity. What was thought of as a possibly exciting, unusual, exotic and new is another thing entirely.

More than anything I see indicative of the breakdown of individuality the sheer scale of the numbers of children from the current generation who seem forever unable to escape the blandest of image veneers. What will the next generation 'see'?

I should not be bitter. I was once young too. I once roamed Wetherby during lunch times eating cheesy NikNaks, playing handheld Donkey Kong or reading Astrex in English at the Library; I loved his capers in Gaul. It is dim but refreshing memory. It was in the second year when the school was out of bounds to us during lunch,due to some stike action involving the NUT and head masters. We spent many months, my cousin, his cohort and I, eating Russian Slices or Tizer(16p) -when the old Co-op had a café; greasey spoon, circa 1984.

I am on a road to find out. The railroad took me away from the brightest lights of that city. On my right side I saw it not; as flat green fields, some yellowing rape and some turmultous forest lead us onwards; welcoming on both sides of the tracks.

I realise this is the easy way. I should walk on without fear from Le Puy, but be very unafraid of chance opportunities to challenge the easier paths. My largest challenge has always been the language barrier; whether my inability to speak with confidence or reference the correct terms in the other languages. An invisible yet powerful barrier to knowledge.

I thought that the short walk from Terminal 3 to the closest gare was all I would need to do to reach my first destination. But CDG is a monolith of electricity, steel, concrete and conceptional barriers to egress. I did fly. I shall not return via a straight road; I shall linger along the rambling and fortune strewn pathways my luck would lead me.

Baseball caps, Wills hoodies, gameboys, crisps; I did not challenge myself only I saw a memory of a distant need.

It will be done.

The windscreens on the TGV to Lyon are dusty. All the views are apparently smog, smokey, foggy; this follows the clouds in banks from east to west. Shame. We pass some body of water twenty minutes from La Part Dieu. Perhaps travelling too fast unravels the miracle of creation. The blanket of my opaquely preventing escape; issue de secours telling me to take a hammer and club-away bring me to what is now a sight I should signify more with dwelling presence.

I have traveled a limited arc, but the vastness is hugely inhumane. In the quiet coach Apple iPhone messaging occurs rapidly a la Leeds.

I wonder up and down the concourse looking for a toliette. But once I find one it turns out to be 50cent not the 40cent which is all I have in change. I think further 'why pay at their convenience for your desperation?' The second train, two stories, clean and vast, I jump on and suddenly no longer require the bowel movement that threatened in Gare de la Part Dieu. We move on to St Etienne Chateaucrox with me being followed by a maddening beserker in a lampshade. I first noticed him talking to himself at CDG. Glenn would laugh. Public transport is often a manajourie(sic) of crazies. None of us crazies drive?

I was too busy writing so I just missed the Rhône on my right. Shame on me! Here we are at Givors-Ville and a solitary chimney sprouting alone. A record of a mill that once stood next to the platform.

To have only glimsed the mighty Rhône as dusk settles on central France.