Un puit

Nous avons effectué une visite dans un refuge pour animaux sauvages blessés. C'était un joli petit endroit, avec notamment un puit. Je ne sais pas s'il est sec ou non, mais j'ai pris une photo dans tous les cas. J'aime beaucoup l'esthétique des puits, je ne sais pas trop pourquoi. En fait oui, je sais, j'ai même blogué sur le sujet. Je les trouve mystérieux et ils ont une symbolique qui m'interpelle. Alors bref, je partage dans tous les cas.

Dry Well

I was walking a few days ago when I saw this well, or this imitation of a well (I don't know if it ever was a true well of course, but it looks like one anyway). I thought it looked striking, in the front of a house, on a hot and dry day, filled with weeds. I find wells mysterious and fascinating, even a bit scary sometimes, see this post from 2009 for more details. So anyway, I wanted to share this picture because I thought it looked quite nice.

Un puit dans le pavillon?

Nous sommes récemment allés dans un parc avec des amis. Pas dans notre ville, mais dans une ville proche, là où ils demeurent. En respectant la distanciation sociale bien entendu. Nous n'y avons pas fait une promenade proprement dire, c'était un parc tout petit, mais nous sommes restés là pour une heure et plus et c'était très agréable. Il y avait aussi ce pavillon, que j'ai bien aimé et qui m'a assez intrigué, car je me demande si c'était un puit à sec qui se trouvait au centre. Dans tous les cas, j'ai pris cette photo parce que.

Un puit fermé

Je voulais montrer cette photo lors d'une des photos du mois, mais jusqu'ici aucun thème ne s'y est prêté, alors je la télécharge maintenant. C'est celle d'un puit, enfin je crois. La photo a été prise à quelque pas de mon ancien lieu de travail, lequel était situé dans une ancienne brasserie. Je ne suis pas demeuré longtemps dans cette compagnie, c'était le pire employeur que j'ai jamais eu, la compagnie a d'ailleurs fait faillite dans la controverse il y a quelques années déjà. Cela dit, j'aimais bien l'édifice et ses environs, dont ce puit fermé. Quand je me promène dans les environs, je fais souvent un détour pour le voir. Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais je l'aime bien.

A view down the mysterious well

I am supposed to gracefully accept an award, but I want to think about it for longer to give it the proper answer. Telling my readership about me is something I do every day, it is difficult to find something new to write about. On the other hand, recently I got enough inspiration to blog about something like a dozen different topics. So I better get started.

Yesterday, my wife and I went with another couple, to a small English village, one of those picturesque villages that are lost in the middle of the country and therefore seemingly untouched by modern life (I hope I am not spouting clichés here, it sounds a bit too much like something from a bad tourist brochure). So much there was old, surrounded by English countryside, almost by wilderness. I was feeling like in a Dungeons & Dragons setting, or in a Hammer movie. We stayed about two hours, but I took enough snapshots to feed this blog for a few weeks.

We went to a local pub, a genuine traditional pub, an old building, with lots of real ales, old wooden furniture, a fireplace, etc. We sat at a round table and discovered that said table was built on a... well. Now how cool is that: a well in a pub? I blogged about it before: I love wells and what they represent in our psyche. Now, since the hole was covered by thick, solid glass, I could look into the well, stare at this black muddy water that was both fascinating and frightening. I felt closer to this imaginary (or not?) danger, into this gate to another world the well represents. Of course, I could still drink my beer above it, which diminished its frightening aspect. Or maybe not, actually. On a full moon, in a drunken state, my imagination might have ran wild and the irrational feeling of danger could have been enhanced. The pub and its well could be the setting for a great story, either a D&D adventure, or a classic horror story. The whole village reminded me of something I could find in one of M.R. James' ghost stories, to think that such a place really exists, especially in our modern age, is quite stimulating. I wish I had the talent for horror stories. I could make a good pastiche. Maybe I should try it. Until then, I still have the setting. As I said to my wife, we need to go there in Autumn, when Halloween is coming. We would then be in the perfect setting in the perfect season.

Mysterious well

This post is vaguely inspired by that one. I hope it is just as successful. I took the picture of this well in the monastery garden of the Jardin botanique de Montréal. You can find more about it here. We visited the garden with some friends and this was maybe my favourite part. I love anything medieval and this is not exception. But I am also very fascinated by wells. Like closed doors, they are very mysterious. Even though they give us precious water (and I had the chance to drink some of that particular one, which was absolutely delicious), they are also potentially dangerous in their nature and menacing in their appearance. Somebody can of course fall in the well and die or get seriously. But on a symbolic level, a well is a gate to another world, the one from down under. Whether it is a dwarfs' kingdom Tolkien style or something more akin to Hades, or simply a troll's hideout, it is nevertheless quite frightening. In folklore, evil spirits were often hiding in wells, so were sometimes better natured faeries. A well is featured prominently in a Tintin movie as a secret passage for badguys and of course in a memorableSimpsons episode (itself based on a true story) proofs that we can modernise this incarnation of the well. As a child, we play a lot of sword and sorcery adventures where wells were often starting points, something we did again in our Dungeons & Dragons stories years later. A well is a perfect setting for a good scary story.