I woke up to too many Messenger notifications to fit on my screen. I love my friends and I don't say this because I feel sorry for myself, but I am not that popular. I had this weird moment of knowing there was something very wrong and flashing back to the morning of March 24, 2013 when I learned the news about my sister. I opened the first message from Jan saying that he'd seen what was happening in Nice when we saw my message. I hadn't heard anything about Nice. The next message was from my mum saying something about Nice, and I responded that I'd just woken up and didn't know what had happened yet. Andrea's message cleared things up for me a bit:
Tess r u okay
did you hear about the Bastille thing?? 80 dead? in France
plz answer I'm freaking out
Her panic was completely understandable. She knew I was at the Bastille celebrations based on my Instagram/Facebook updates, but she didn't know that it might be going on in more than one city. After responding to all the messages that I was fine, and posting something generic so that anyone else who was worried would see that I was okay, I walked to the living room where the news was on and ate my breakfast while learning about the attack. I felt like I should feel more lucky that it didn't happen in Paris, but I just felt kind of strange about it. Marie and I talked about what it had felt like when the attack happened at Charlie Hebdo and how they had insisted that everyone should stay inside, but that the Parisians didn't agree - they wouldn't be made to feel afraid in their own city. Fear and hatred were the goal of Daesh, and they didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
In the same spirit, Marie and I set out to spend the day doing something we liked. Unfortunately, we first had to go to the bank. And what should have taken a few minutes ended up taking Marie 3 hours in a waiting room. She mercifully let me go out on my own (I was sad not to be able to spend the time with her). I had seen a poster advertising an exhibit about Apollinaire at the Musée de l'Orangerie, and I was excited to see it as I'd fallen in love with his poetry during my undergraduate years. He had been drafted during WWI and shot in the head, but he had survived and continued writing poetry. He invented "caligrammes", a revival of shape poems that had been used by the Greeks and in 14th century religious poetry.
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« Colombe poignardée et jet d'eau » - Apollinaire
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On my way to the exhibit, I stopped at a boulangerie Marie had suggested and bought a Brie sandwich. I was in my glory - I had known all the social cues necessary for ordering, I didn't need to look apologetic about botching the language, I got a baguette and Brie cheese out of the whole deal. Seriously, what could be better? I forgot how much I loved baguettes. Like, I knew how much I had previously loved them and badly wanted to have one again, but I sank into a reverie worthy of true love as I ate my sandwich one bite at a time on the metro. No one else was eating, but I had zero concern for how uncouth this might have seemed to the locals. It was sublime.
I had been to the Orangerie before, and remembered that it featured Monet's impressionist paintings, but the exhibit was in the basement, which I had not realized existed. It was the best discovery. The entire basement was filled with paintings by my favourite French artists. I watched as a fellow tourist went from painting to painting, stopping only long enough to snap a photo of the painting for later. I don't like leveling judgments against others, but this behaviour is so characteristic of my generation. Will she ever look through all of those photos? How will she be able to see the movement in the brushstrokes or feel the wonder of standing in front of that canvas? We're so obsessed with "catching them all" and have so much "fear of missing out", that we do miss out. Forgive me for the cliché, but taking time to smell the flowers is exactly what we need to do, as a generation, to experience more joy and feel satisfied by our days. I wanted to encourage her to slow down and enjoy it, but she was in too much of a rush. I don't spend a long time looking at every painting, but when I connect with one, I spend as much time as I like letting its effect wash over me.
Mr. Apollinaire himself said J'émerveille. I release wonder. The exhibit was full of wonder for me. As a literary geek, it was exciting to see what an influence he had had on the artistic movements of his time. He brought artists and writers together, exposed a young art dealer to the works of Picasso, André Breton, Gertrude Stein, Marc Chagall, and Marcel Duchamp, among others - that art dealer went on to donate his collections posthumously to the Musée de l'Orangerie. He was an art critic who supported Cubism and coined the terms for Orphism and Surrealism. Basically, he was just an incredibly awesome guy and I did not feel guilty at all about the hours I spent reading nearly every piece of information in that exhibit.
My university class where I first encountered Apollinaire was called "Texte et image" and one of our assignments was to write our own (French) poetry based on Apollinaire's work. Mine is featured in the PDF documents below:
- Il y a... (PDF)
- L'ordinateur, le clavier et la souris (PDF)
- Cartes postales (PDF)
- ti< Vol.1, No.1 (2012)
The only other Paris destination I was curious to see this trip were the jardins de Versailles. I'd seen the gardens and the château several years earlier on a trip with the Brock French Club, but it was in February during our reading week and the gardens had not been much to look at. I had no interest to return to the palace, especially with the crowds I knew would be there (the palace had been impressively packed with tourists even in February), so I paid for the entrance into the "musical gardens" exhibit, not fully understanding what the point of that was, and set out somewhat aimlessly through the towering bushes.
Apparently, my 9 euro ticket was supposed to cover the art installation that was playing on the theme of water, but none of the exhibits were running so I was a little cranky that I had paid so much to see them. The classical music was a fun addition to my "turn" around the gardens (as an Austen heroine might say).
I felt a little like I was walking through Hagrid's maze for the third task in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
I ordered soft serve from an ice cream place - chocolate-vanilla swirl - and sat for a while in the grass next to the lake watching couples in paddle boats, and friends taking selfies on the grass. It was a really good choice for a serene afternoon in semi-nature. I can see why Marie Antoinette liked this place so much.
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