I cannot say enough about Paris! It’s amazing beyond all my expectations, lofty as they were. When I was sitting on the steps to the Sacred Heart Basilica under a comfortably warm sun, listening to the street musicians and soaking up a bit of sun, I was perfectly content. I could actually see myself living here sometime in the future.
Here’s an alternate view of how I felt sitting on those warm steps, surrounded by movement, history, laughter, and light:
“It was one of those moments when the universe stops.
A feeling of content tranquility,
coupled with a satisfied understanding.
A moment of unity and peace with the world."
Rarely does the clichéd notion of inner peace enter my life – I find myself immersed in a world of impersonality and coldness in humanity that I cannot comprehend, and so I retreat into silence or sarcastic remarks as an unjustified, but effective, defense. Jaded though I am at my ancient 18, never will the day I felt absolute, complete, contentment of my being, my moment of “satisfied understanding,” of “peace and unity with the world,” leave my consciousness, nor will I ever stop striving to be able to return to that place, time of day, season, and emotion, to relive it. [This is merely a preface; it doesn’t necessarily need to be included with it in the future.]
Underneath the golden and soothingly warm Paris sunshine, I reclined in a world simply otherworldly – a city of lights and sounds unfamiliar and glorious in their novelty and continuity - the bustle and tussle of a great city of the ages at my feet. Sitting on the straight and narrowed steps outside of Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, who stood proud and graceful and reaching out like the most touching and heart-breaking of starkly white marble Mother Mary statues, I felt a spirituality completely cut off from religion, from order, from control. I felt flooded with contentment, a longing to never leave my cement step spot, to sit forever on that great hill of artists and musicians and critics and thinkers and simply people who are – who sit outside cafes with espresso and chocolate and cigarettes and read poetry, who remember the good days, who sit with old friends, who cradle their new child, and are therefore great -a place woven from history and culture and enlightenment, a place sincerely devoid of superficiality and condescension and judgment and of time management, of profession, or class, and watch the late afternoon fade with brilliant pinks and blues and stripes of gold across a crisp sky into sunset with a flourish again and again over palace and apartment building, boulangerie and cafe, in a dreamy déjà vu that captivated my soul.”
Our first activity of the day, after a traditionally wonderful French breakfast, was a coach tour around the sprawling city. Our tour guide was very friendly and sweet, knowledgeable about Paris and able to recreate history with a bit of flair. The tour also gave me some orientation to the geography and city layout. Paris has 20 districts, with #1 in the center and the rest spreading out in a circular fashion from there. The city is further separated into the West and East back of the Seine (bringing us the Latin Quarter) and the island where Notre Dame rests. Each of the aforementioned districts has a specialty product of service - some sell musical instruments, and the Latin Quarter, for instance, sells books. We drove by the endless stalls of tattered books by the side of the road - I could feel their dog-eared pages of want, love, lust, hate, worth, thought, death, failure, history, triumph - endless emotions calling out to me in the irresistible cover of a old French book. Some stalls even had classic records and other rare collectibles. There are also 60 green foundations built around the city - they were constructed by a militant anti-alcohol activist who though Parisians drank too much wine. They a;so have a program placing grey, basketed bikes, about 8-10 to a rack, around the city for people to rent temporarily and get around for small errands.
Notably, we passed the Sorbonne, a university I have often considered in my lists of places-I-will-never-get-into-and-cannot-afford. Just passing by the perfectly Parisian philosopher building was gratifying enough, until I leave ASU at least. Our tour guide mentioned some students were preparing for or taking “le bac,” a much harder version of our SAT that dictates college entrance. I decry the US’s education system for something more European – tests at the 8th grade level for trade school, an equivalent of an associate’s degree of for university studies.
We drove around many monuments, learning Louis XIV’s nickname was the Sun King for his use of gold and sun symbols in his palaces and commissioned artwork. The word boulevard comes from the horse chestnut trees (or boule verts) that line the streets throughout Paris, providing shade and a bit of green to the historic city. The Rivier Seine, which we had gotten a great view of at the Eiffel Tower, is pronounced “sin.” This revelation came after one of the delegates mispronounced it. And how can I forget driving by (yes, only driving) Notre Dame cathedral. The size of the stained glass window in the wondrous church defies classification – the building took almost two centuries to build, starting gin 1163. We also drove through the Concorde Square (Place de la Concorde), the site of the revolutionary guillotine after monarchs had enjoyed public executions there. (Further info courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_de_la_Concorde). Le Musee de Louvre, which we would visit later, was originally built as a battlement to protect Paris. After a king was murdered in the building, his queen commissioned a new palace, the Luxembourg Palace, with accompanying gardens.
We were able to get out the coach at the gardens, a green carpet dotted with trees, shrubs, flowerbeds, statues, tennis and volleyball courts, and crepe stands. We took an all-too-short walk around the nearest pat of the gardens, stopping briefly to admire the palace itself. The tour guide mentioned that the gardens was a favorite sport of Ernest Hemingway's during his time in Paris - he could catch pigeons to eat, evidently. I certainly wish I could have sat in the park day after a day and wrote a novel or two. One of my fellow delegates and I then got to experience something new – a pay-per-use bathroom. This was a completely foreign concept to me, but is common in Paris (we again saw this same idea in the shopping mall outside the Louvre). The restrooms near the Louvre, however, were much more lose than the ones I used at the park (I heard this second-hand). Evidently, they have different colors of toilet seats, tissue paper, and other amenities you can use – for a fee, of course.
After lunch, we pressed on towards the grandfather of all art collections/museums/spaces filled with people – the Louvre. We navigated through the colossal space (which would take about two months to see in its entirety) by a treasure hunt of sorts. We were split into 4 groups, and then visited a certain number of the most famous attractions in the museum. Our first stop was Nike, the winged victory statue that the Nike brand based their logo off of – the curve of her left wing, to be exact. Next was the largest painting in the museum’s collection as far as I could tell, the Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 Dec 1804 by Jacques-Louis David. Our hunt papers also included interesting facts about some of the artwork – in Coronation, Napoleon is shown on steps to make him look taller than his court. Apollo’s gallery followed, with the strange in its accuracy Venus de Milo, a statue of lovely Aphrodite. We went on through the endless corridors (which are not air conditioned in consideration of the art. Some pieces are so delicate they must be in temperature-controlled glass cases).
We next located the room that housed Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix, a very stirring painting of the aftermath of a bloody battle. You can see it here: http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice_popup.jsp?CONTENT<>cnt_id=10134198673237674&CURRENT_LLV_NOTICE<>cnt_id=10134198673237674&FOLDER<>folder_id=9852723696500815&bmLocale=en
The last of the paintings we hurriedly viewed was the illustrious Mona Lisa. On a wall by herself, dwarfed by the huge painting she faces and the constant 10 person deep crown that enveloped her viewing area, she sits calmly. So calmly, in fact, it is disconcerting. I will attest that her eyes do really follow your movements around the room, and something about her almost-curled-into-a-smile lips give you the air of humor and intelligence far beyond he regular measure of a piece of canvas. As captivating as Da Vinci’s woman was, I really enjoyed walking through the bowels of the palace, seeing pieces of the original Louvre castle, intermixed with cool, underground rooms of Egyptian antiquity – a modern day pyramid in the middle of Paris. Maybe the Egyptian mystique that seems to crop up often in Paris draws me even more strongly to it.
Our last stop in our altogether short time in the museum was the room housing the former French crown jewels. Much like still royal English Crown Jewels, they are unbelievably sparkly and containing large amounts of mind-bogglingly large gems. Also, much like the other set, they were mostly gotten by conquest and brutality – that does take away some of their grandeur. The jewels and some other artifacts were in the rooms decorated by Louis XIV in accordance with his Sun King nickname. He had suns displayed prominently in the décor, along with astrological symbols. These rooms in particular featured, carved, painted, and gilded ceilings, which captivated one’s attention so much one might bump into innocent Frenchman and benches. Even now that I’m back home trying to write all these entries, I can’t imagine the time and effort that were put into just one of the many masterpieces inside. Some took lifetimes.
As I mentioned, outside of the museum entrance is a shopping mall of sorts. The center court showcases the beautiful glass pyramid, which hangs down as well as pushes up through the ground. The lighting from this interesting fixture is intense, bright enough to illuminate almost the whole mall. Many stores in the shopping center were very upscale, though some were recognizable, like Virgin Megastore. I thought I might snag a French newspaper there, but no luck.
After our art culture shock, we went to Bistro L’eorin. I felt so uptown, sitting outside at the little bistro, sipping out ice water from crystal wine glasses, delicately picking at our escargot (delicious) and frog legs (unfortunately the taste and consistency of overly cooked chicken).
One cultural cliché is the flowers in windowsills in France – alas, it is true. Also, we saw more than one lady or gentleman with a fresh baguette in a large paper sack on their way home. Further, French keyboards (and also keyboards in the Netherlands) are laid out in a different arrangement than US or UK boards, causing typing mayhem, as my emails to Mom during this period will attest.
Back in my journal, I mourned our passing of the Musee D’Orsay, full of my favorite artist, Van Gogh. I'm also sad we didn't explore the catacombs, as they are now closed due to vandalism.
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