Zen and the Art of Being Dragged to the Museums
We were going to Paris!
Upon
learning this, my mind envisioned all I had heard about the great city.
Can-can girls, risqué postcards, decadence, wine, women, and song. The
bohemian life style. You know, all the things teen-age boys and dirty
old men whisper about and drool over.
But,
my wife had planned le trip and she had a somewhat different take on
the delights of the city of lights. Having a one-semester course in
French from Jr. College, and, knowing all about France and everything,
her itinerary for us was, to understate, different. You see her
education had also included a semester of Art Appreciation (read -
museums).
Looking up museum in
the Webster's dictionary, I found: museum - an institution, building,
or room for preserving and exhibiting artistic, historic, or scientific
objects. Probably not extremely racy stuff, I concluded after careful
study.
Searching the web for
"museums+jokes" resulted in "sorry, your search yielded no results".
The venerable Bonjour Paris web site, given the same query, came back
"this is a serious subject - no jokes exist".
Didn't sound like much fun at all, this museum stuff.
With a "my dear, you might want to look over this material," my wife began my introduction to the cultural side of Paris.
One
of the "look over this" was the green Michelin Paris guidebook. This
was to become our leader, our master, and a real pain to my backside.
Totally devoid of humor, packed with esoteric facts, and the smallest
print devised by man, I was to spend more time peering into it than
looking around at what it described.
There
are, in Paris, mandatory things you must see before the French
government will return your passport and allow you to leave the
country. To name a few: the Champs-Elysees, the Eiffel Tower, the Cite,
and the Louvre. All of these (except the last) can be clicked off by
strolling along and peering about. The last, the Louvre, is what the
French call a musee and it requires a bit more attention.
The
Louvre is what us country boys call a hum dinger. It is huge and packed
full of things. We were to spend the rest of our lives there I feared.
A friend of mine, short on time in Paris, contracted for a guided tour
there once, with instructions to be shown only the meaningful things.
When I mentioned this as a good idea for us, my wife gave me her
special look and sigh, and I realized, no, maybe not.
As
my darling examined a piece of art I was assigned the job of reading
her the description of what she saw. Then before I could gaze at the
wonderful thing, she would be gone and calling, "Come, my dear, and
read what Michelin says about this." I did get a chance to look at the
Mona Lisa though - she is really quite cute and must have thought the
same of me. Her eyes followed me about the room.
After
what seemed like days but, in reality, was only one afternoon, of
"return to the bottom of the stairs: to the right is the Coptic art
section… return and go up the Egyptian Stairway which is lined with
canopic urns …", my spouse announced, “All right, we have done the
Louvre."
As I followed behind
her ( limping, bleary eyed, and dog tired ) through what is called cour
carre, she turned and, with great exuberance, exclaimed, "Now wasn't
that fun?"
Knowing how I must respond, I said, “Yes, my dear - terribly."
A
good friend of mine once informed me that if you've seen one museum
you've seen them all. He must not have imported that wisdom to my wife,
because the next day she proudly proclaimed, "Today, le Pompidou!"
Described as a gigantic parallelepiped, and looking like the nightmare
an architect might have after a night of cheap wine and acid, this
musee houses what my sweetie pie called contemporary art. What that
means I do not know, but whatever it is there sure is a lot of it
there. And believe me, my dear one saw it all. She rented us Walkman
listening things and went about oohing and aahingfor the next two
hours. I spent all my time trying to adjust the volume and decipher the
French it emitted. I did not succeed with either.
Les
Invalides and its neighbor the musee de l'armee seemed to hold promise.
The idea of a hospital (I was feeling a need of one) and a whole lot of
items with which to kill people (the appeal should be obvious) stirred
slight excitement.
But the
highlight turned out to be Napoleon's tomb. During his time Napoleon
was loved by the French, and feared by the rest of the world. Exiled
and poisoned by his enemies, who feared he might return to power, he
rested here in Eglise du Dome. To be sure he wasn't coming back, his
body was placed in six coffins, each contained within the other: the
innermost is of tin sheeted iron; the second of mahogany; the third and
fourth of lead; the fifth of ebony; the last of oak.
"Lucky guy. Josephine would play heck getting him out of there to drag him around all these museums," I mumbled out loud.
Unfortunately
my dear one heard me. "Oh my, I had forgotten about Mal Maison. That is
the home Josephine built out in the country. We must go there
tomorrow!" Paris has built up quite a bit since Napoleon's time, I
guess, but Mal Maison is still way out in the country. To get there you
take the metro to La Defense. Then you take a bus. Then you walk about
a mile. We spent more time going and coming than we did staying. Once
there, all I could do was doze on a bench while my indefatigueable mate
sighed out loud to her hearts content.
More musees; but, by now I had lost count and didn't care anyway.
Then
on the last musee, maybe because I knew it was the last one, I seemed
to start to get it. Maybe so much exposure to culture finally makes one
cultured, I thought.
Feeling
now, through osmosis, culture pulsing through my veins I was determined
to become at one with the museum. This final stop was a museum of
modern art with a (guess what?) French name I forget. "Yep, I have
really clued in to all this," I thought as I contemplated an abstract
of brick- like artistic symbols arranged in a modernistic pattern on
the floor. Assuming the pose of the musee afficionado - right foot
forward, left hand on hip, head tipped ever so slightly, and right hand
stroking the chin - I mused. While I pondered, a workman pushing a
wheelbarrow came and took the bricks outside where he was repairing the
terrace wall.
Oh, well, I thought, if you've seen one musee, you've seen them all.
Bonjour Paris is pleased to have Don Andrews as a contributor.
