Zen Debauchery

Yes yes, hello again! Remember me? It's been a while. I know. So what has culminated in the last 2 months? Well, let's jump in...a few short weeks after returning from the south of France, I left the mountain life behind. Good bye and good riddance to that beautiful corner of the world, ready to meander a little more towards the euphony of what my heart desires: an incandescent beat!

I spent the latter half of the summer living in a ramshackle hut in the woods, hunting out mushrooms in the surrounding forests, filling my lungs to their capacity with the already chilly mountain-fresh air, and burning in my mind the last images of those breathtaking mountains...to carry with me all the way back to Paris. Yup. City to mountains to city again. Why can't I just have the two around me all the time? Oh right. That's where the perfect home of Vancouver is for me! Perfect little junction of perfect little worlds collide in Vancouver....beaches, water, mountains, city. Why go anywhere else?? Oh right. To get out of the jog trot of that life, into the jog trot of another...Paris.






Ah yes, the beloved little shack, complete with hobbit-sized entry. Hey, at least we had a stove to cook on!



Argentière's best deck for morning sunshine!






I secretly bought a one way ticket to surprise my friend Adrien, who I had been missing dearly all summer. I showed up at his door one Tuesday evening, unbeknownst to him, and have been hiding out ever since among the sqaures of Parisien apartments (thanking the stars every day that I am not living a total bindle stiff existance in Europe!) Leading a very zen routine lately, that much is sure. However, I have been locked up in my head so much, needing to invoke Occam's razor to just keep it simple man...it has become such an idée fixe lately to get beyond this myopic viewpoint in order to breathe a little easier. I love living a life of freedom and spontaneity, but there comes a point when I still need to know what's coming next...a little less nearsightedness and I am at ease.


While the hodgepodge of scattered ideas tried to add up to a clear consensus, I went about enjoying my time anyway with Adrien on our weekends together (don't see much of him during the week since he works every day). We went south the first weekend I arrived, to the Limosin region to partake in an annual tradition with old friends, Les Léolympiades (a weekend of pure debauchery, tied into an Olympics theme in the sunny countryside of central France);
T-shirts made up in honour of the Léopold brothers who hosted this annual event




Day 1 and bikini's are on and fish is a'grillin!



Not a bad poolside view to have for the weekend!




.... The next weekend was a housewarming party in Brussels, Belgium (complete with beer fest debauchery);

A beer tasting contest...which I beat out the other two men. Thankyouverymuch. Dad'll be proud!!



Beer festival Menu. Just to whet yer palette.



The famous Bar Delerium, in Brussels, that made it into the Guiness Book of World Records...a beer menu of over 2,004 beers! Yes...this BOOK is the menu




... The next weekend was a summer festival to end all summer festivals, La Fête de l'Humanité (utter and absolute crowded, loud, sleepless, and musical debauchery);


On the bill to start: Tiken Jah Fakoly, Femi Kuti, NERD, Supertramp (well the singer anyway...!) Improvisateurs Dub...among many others. The french like their raggae and dub. A lot.



Sun sets over the campgrounds...every and I mean EVERY single tent is Quechua! lol



Silly kids...no idea where bamboo shoots came into play!




... The next weekend was a musical parade that closed down the streets of Paris and Bastille Square (later turning into total debauchery of the most long lasting déjà vu moment of my life);
... And the weekend after that in Adrien's hometown of Decize in the Burgundy (Bourgogne) region of France
(2 full days of mushroom picking debauchery with a little more decency thrown in, god help us);





.... And last but not least...yet: the absolute debauchery of the night-time, illegal underground variety.


Yes, a magical night about 30 metres deep, under the streets and metro-tangled web of Paris... I finally got to witness what not too many others visiting Paris get to see: les Catacombes. Now, these aren't the real part of the catacombes where you can pay to see the bones that were transported from the city's overflowing graveyards in the 18th century. No, that legal 5% of the catacombes is not what we were interested in. Those are caves. These are tunnels. There's a difference. We ventured into the deep dark, maybe 0.5 - 1% of the other illegal 95% of the catacombes. Quite possibly the world's largest maze. Burrowed haphazardly beneath the surface city, these tunnels of enormous gypsum and limestone quarries were mined beginning in the 12th century for the construction of some of your favourites, such as the Notre Dame, the Louvre, and Sacré Coeur to name a few.


Many many rabbit holes...twisting, wriggling, crawling head first, feet first...whatever it took.


So, illegal you say? Were we playing with the law, risking getting arrested or fined by les cataflics (special cata-cops) doing this? You bet. But I didn't care. This was a chance I had to take! The entrances to these tunnels are known to very few, and there is NO WAY in hell you would want to go in there without a guide. Luckily for me...I met such a guy last time I was in Paris (thank you again couchsurfing) that took a group of 8 of us down into this bonafide labyrinth of underground Parisian quarries.


"Bring a flashlight and clothes you don't care about" was all I was told. Hmm...ok. Oh and lots of wine of course....we are in France after all. No social gathering is complete without wine, we all know that. (It's really breaking my bank account though, all these 3-4€ bottles of wine...) But let's not divigate.







At La Playa, one of the more impressive painted/themed rooms

At our meeting point that night, our guide Jean-Luc is looking like a pro with his coveralls, (tall) rubber boots and headlamp. He inspects us and is worried about the rubber boots of Sylvain, another frenchman. He doesn't think they're high enough. That's not a good sign. I only have runners. I don't want to drown.

We set off, pairing up and chattering as we walk excitedly along to a bridge not far. Feeling like total bandits as we slipped through the cut section of a wire fence, sliding down the dirt path to land on deserted old railroad tracks, I look around wondering where the police are.


Hey! There's actually headspace in this room!

We started our long walk into the dark tunnel towards....well, no one knew except our guide of course. As was the case the whole night. We were a pretty tight clinging group of eight, that's for sure!


We arrive. Jean-Luc flashes his light at a hole in the cement wall of the train tunnel, that was completely invisible in the black night. He's done this before obviously. 'This is the entrance, I thought?' (See photo at left) 'Good god, what am I in for?' Little did I know, this was just the beginning. "Roll up your pants, turn off your flashlights" he tells us in french. It's completely black. "It is going to be much darker than this, inside these tunnels" he explains. HOW is that possible, I ask myself. I can't see a damn thing.


In we go, one by one.... It's tight — really tight — a bit of a twist, then a fall ... into darkness. I hit solid ground and move out of the way! We scurry along a tight little tunnel, and it's wet wet wet on the ground. I, naturally, try to avoid the small puddles as long as I can. Jean-Luc calls back to me at least 3 or 4 times to just give up. I'm going to get much wetter from here on in. I deny him. I'm good at getting around the puddles! We take a turn to crawl into an absolute rabbit hole, and out into a corridor, only to turn down another tunnel that....yup, is at least KNEE DEEP in dirty water. It came suddenly with no warning at all. Well shit. I roll my pants up further and plunge in! Wading our way with feet pressed against the side walls to avoid finding out just how deep some of the passages really are, me with my flashlight clenched between my teeth so I could hold onto the sides of the walls for support (hands now caked with mud and limestone) I try to regulate my breathing. This is a lot harder than I'd imagined. No time to think about anything else (damn that water is cold!) as Jean-Luc is pressing us on from way up ahead; we have to move people! There is lots to see! Cursing only lightly (what the @#%$ is this water teeming with?? No no, don't think about that Allie, not now!)


Crawling along the deeper water sections


There are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels here. (Double click on this map to get a good look at it. Most of the bottom portion is what we saw) There are some marked tunnel walls with two-century-old signs of the corresponding ground-level streets. We run along, stooped low, ape-like, as the ceilings descended more and more, stopping so often to make sure the group is all together. It doesn't take long for me to work it out. You have to keep up with the person in front of you. The afterglow of his light illuminates your way and the pressure to not get lost weighs on me most of the night. My eyes are wide with wonder, looking down every corridor we crossed, wondering how in hell I would ever find my way through this maze if I was alone. We crawl through more holes in the wall, headfirst with the person behind pushing your legs through, inching our way on hands and knees to land upon a themed room.

The whole night passed like this, with stops for drinks snacks and chatter, as Jean-Luc went over some of the history with us. Each room was a different theme, with different sculptures or with painted pictures on the gritty walls ranging from rather sophisticated to, well...so much graffiti, we're in an underground museum but the displays are out of chronology, 1850, 1777, 1941, some fluorescent graffiti from revolutionary times — or just last year, last week, yesterday? Look even closer around you and you'll also see carved faces and masks in the walls, even mosaic motifs, or tiny cities being started by all les cataphiles that frequent the joint...(yes, the crazies and not-so-crazies that frequent this underground world have official titles even)



Only a couple times did we all extinguish the lights. Silence. Not a sound. No dripping. Nothing. Jet black darkness like I have NEVER experienced in my life. There is no need to close your eyes. No need to tune anything out. There is n-o-t-h-i-n-g in that blackness. It was frightfully desolate. You have NO depth perception for it to even feel like a heavy darkness. You are immediately disjointed. Something even more akin to being burried alive? That's the closest I ever want to feeling that. You have to experience this blackness to truly know what it feels like.

The Castle Room, yes, complete with castle carved right out of the room itself (you can spot it in the back of the room)

All in all, we spent about 8 hours underground, instead of the planned 3 or 4. We didn't care to look at the time, it was so much fun...the chemistry of our group was a pleasant surprise, and Jean-Luc later confided that it was his best trip underground so far. That was a pretty cool thing to hear. We emerged into the first light of 4am into the deserted Paris streets, all looking a little bit like deer in the headlights. We wandered aimlessly while we came to terms with what just went on this past night. Eventually we all parted ways and found our paths home. Bodies aching, minds running, sweetest sleep ever.

There is much more movement planned in the coming weeks, but I hope to get my bearings together and keep you updated between here and Morocco.

love to you all, and see you SOON?!