Sam Turner
by the Garonne
This intense young man, dressed in his coffee-house black, striding with such earnest zeal down the riparian promenade that follows the banks of the Garonne is not the first intense young man to do so. During the French Revolution, disconsolate priests (also dressed in black) walked beside the river, having learned the Constitution civile du clergé had essentially reduced them to mere government employees. Dark-robed physicians from La Grave hospital walked these same banks, treating beggars and country folk who’d come to the Toulouose for treatment of the plague. Simon de Monfort, who wore a red crusader’s cloak, died a couple hundred meters from these same river banks when his Christian army laid siege to the Château Narbonnais in order to rid the earth of other Christians who renounced the material world in favor of spiritual love. Vikings (who apparently shared a fondness for dark clothing and red cloaks) trod these banks in the 9th century, having sailed and rowed down the Garonne all the long way from Bordeaux to Toulouse, where they were stopped. A Moorish army of nearly 400,000 (many of whom wore red cloaks), under the command of Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, the Wali of Al-Andalus, camped along the Garonne in the 8th century when they attempted unsuccessfully to capture the city of Toulouse. And perhaps the most famouse of red-robed armies, the Romans, actually moved the original city of Tolosa to its present location at the direction of Julius Ceasar.
Les petits ruisseaux font les grandes rivières, as the French say. Little streams make big rivers. Romans, Vikings, Moors, crusaders, plague doctors, priests and now this intense young man—little streams, big rivers.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
