This flaneur strolled 12 miles around Paris today – last training before the Camino. A highlight was the courtyard in the Marais where I have always heard birds singing on one vine-covered wall. The vines were still bare of leaves today, but the songbirds were as tuneful as ever. It was the second avian blessing of this journey (preceded by the first goldfinch of the season appearing in our yard an hour before I departed). Tonight I visited a sensational exhibition at Grand Palais of Bill Viola’s transcendent video art. Among the many works I hadn’t seen was the “Ascension of Tristan,” where a motionless man on a slab comes to life and begins to ascend in slow motion (it took 10 minutes on a 20 foot vertical screen) into the full force of a waterfall – stunningly persuasive iconography for returning to the divine. It turns out that not all the art in Paris is old!