"You must feel these works of art…."
It is an adventure traveling alone. My phone has failed me twice. The second time it failed I didn’t have my map as I rely upon the cell phone and a thing called citymapper to get me back to the apartment. I also rely on I-translate to speak to Parisians for directions. You can imagine my fear or maybe you can’t when I was completely lost and people only pointed in directions or had no clue where Rue de Penthievre was when I asked in broken French. Many miles with sore and swollen feet later I happened upon my street. When I finally reached Verizon on Joseph’s house phone, they couldn’t figure out the problem but they explained how to reset the phone as the problem was possibly with the French Internet towers not syncing all the time with my phone. I must say I will be in incredibly awesome shape as I walk thus far about 6 – 8 miles a day. On my lost day, however, I covered 12 miles – I have a pedometer just to see how much territory I cover.
The metaphor of being lost in a foreign city rather than a forest and having to find a way out without physical helpers was not lost on me. Once again as always and forever in my life, intuition took over and got me home. In the future I will carry a map as well as my cell so as not to wear out my intuition.
The single most striking thing since I have been in Paris has been the picture of the woman lying prostrate on the Champs D’Elysses. She was one of 7 that I counted along the avenue. All were Muslim women wearing the Habib and lying like the woman pictured. Their heads were down, an arm straight out holding a begging cup, no words and no glances. The power of that image is haunting. As I walked through the Renaissance Italian paintings hall at the Louvre, this triptych painted in the 14th Century stopped me and I thought of her and all the Muslim women on the Champs D’elysees. Christian, Muslim, Jewish doesn’t matter – suffering is suffering in any religion and in any century.
But in the Musee I’orangerie all suffering disappears. Walking through a stark white hallway into a room of such incredible beauty, it brought tears to my eyes. These pictures do not do justice to the 12 foot long paintings by Monet of his gardens. One on either wall and 2 on the back walls and I remembered what Dr. Biedermeier, Freud’s antiquities dealer, said to Jean Houston ” you must always try and feel these works of art in terms of the time and the people who made them.” Therein is my journey!