“Fay ce que vouldras” is a Middle French phrase meaning “Do what you will” or “Do as you will”. It was the motto of Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème.
At work, I can look out of the window to an interesting landscape, though they’ve pasted a reflective sunscreen on the glass which blurs it making me think I have my wrong glasses on. There’s the site of a new residential development: little houses, roads, flags advertising the Marketing Suite, bulldozers, workers, drainage, dried mud.
Accordingly, I escape whenever I can to explore these exciting places, and it would take a big volume to record the feelings and memories evoked by the sounds and smells and visual impact. Beyond the building site is a highway with a railway line running parallel, hardly visible from the window, now that Spring has made trees dense with new growth. At the horizon there’s an artificial ski slope with what looks like two spires behind it, the ensemble like a mythical castle so incongruous and unattainable that it’s been my goal for several days. But as in a fairy tale, there are obstacles to overcome.
A dear colleague who’s now working in a different department wants to meet in the staff restaurant at 12.30. But when I can, I skip out carefree, to find the route to the fairy castle. One day I found a little
underpass which tunnels beneath the highway and the railway track, and connects to litter-strewn footpaths which take you to some places both grand and squalid. There’s a recreation park for Hewlett Packard, with special jogging routes and tennis courts. It looks nice but signs warn me to stay out or else the CCTV will see my misdemeanours. I imagine them sending Security in grey suits and dark glasses to chuck me out. Then there’s a public recycling tip with the unusual sign, “No pedestrians”. I imagine being accidentally bulldozed into a machine that compresses garbage,
The following day I try again, this time over a rusting iron footbridge, talking to myself via my voice recorder, though I haven’t transcribed the tape yet.
Francois Rabelais is on my mind. His character Gargantua founded the 
Abbey of Thelema, whose motto was “Do what you want”. Rabelais wrote in the early 16th century, when religion was in turmoil like today, with a great confusion of ancient authority and manifest corruption. You could see the Reformation gathering force like storm-clouds filling the sky.
I’m glad to see the cheeky graffiti of some rebellious artist. I meant to talk about this philosophy of “Fay ce que vouldras” but it’s reluctant to express itself and I’m 
glad really. It doesn’t need to be formulated but felt and lived. My true nature can be trusted to know what to do, so long as I stand on the bedrock of my uniqueness. I remain vulnerable and exposed in this world, but angels protect me. They can be trusted too.
a wayfarer’s notes 