El Centre del Món

I caught the €1 train this morning to Perpignan to see the ophthalmologist. He thinks my main problem with headaches is due to dry eyes. I have a new prescription for a slight variation of lenses and also for eyedrops. Afterwards, I went to Les Halles for a light, Lebanese lunch and Portuguese pasties de nata.. The railway station in Perpignan is quite famous.
On September 19, 1963, surrealist artist Salvador Dali experienced an ecstatic mystical vision in Perpignan train station. A regular user of hallucinogenic substances, Dali had spent years probing the nature of existence through art and science and psychology. This vision led him to believe that Perpignan’s train station was a structural model of the limited universe we inhabit.
By measuring the platforms, by careful observation of the exact angle of the roof and the iron girders streaked in pigeon droppings that support it, the artist was able to calculate the weight of God.
Two years later, he completed his painting ‘La Gare de Perpignan,’ in which the artist is shown tumbling either toward or away from the viewer, shafts of golden light spreading out in every direction while a train bears down from above.