Art Girl Sees Water Lilies, Bursts into Tears

So that happened.

Let's just say, it has been quite a week here in Paris. Finding an apartment was no easy task — after visiting ten different apartments dispersed throughout Paris, alternatively conversing and clashing with various landlords, becoming hopelessly lost on the subway, hopelessly lost on the streets and hopelessly lost in the grocery store — I've been teetering on the emotional fringe.

It's been an incredibly eye-opening (and frustrating) experience to realize that I can't express myself to the fullest extent. Sometimes in conversation, my ideas feel trapped in my head. I think of a joke or a thought I'd like to voice, and merde (that's shit in Parisian), I can't! I can eeeu and uum or even attempt charades, but sometimes I truly just cannot communicate clearly.

A little of that is ok. But it builds up. And today was my first day of class at the Sorbonne. Operating on five hours of sleep, I took the metro into town. Google Maps estimated 15 minutes of travel time. I used the mathematical operation I've developed to calculate how long it will take me to get from point A to point B here:

(estimated GoogleMaps travel time) x 4 = (Phoebe tries to navigate paris travel time)

My calculations regurgitated the number 60. So I left the apartment at 8 o clock for my first class — 'History of Patrimony' from 9 to 10:30. Turns out not even my extraordinarily generous time estimation formula wasn't generous enough this time around. Finally found the bloody class at 10:25, in a building a full eight blocks away from where I thought I was going to school. Loving this monday morning thing. 

I think I could have held it together if the rest of the day had been filled with croissants and Mona Lisas and long romantic walks along the Seine with a handsome french hand model. Instead, it was stacked with a three hour Contemporary Art lecture I understood about ten percent of, a grump at the grocery store, pouring rain, a head-ache inducing lack of coffee, and another failed venture into the labyrinth of the Parisian metro. Man, I was on the brink.

And when I stepped into the circular room on the first floor of the Musee de l'Orangerie, something in me cracked. It was breathtaking— a crisp open space embraced by four large water lily panels by Claude Monet. There was something about the silence and pervading sense of absolute calm in that room that contrasted so strongly with the last ten days I've spent in Paris. For the first time, I felt like I could take a deep breath. Like I could sigh. Like I could just lay it all down for a few minutes. So I cried — but it's not like they had to put up a 'Caution: Wet Floor' sign up after I left or anything.

Monet created 'Water Lilies' after World War I, and donated the work and space to the French people. It was intended as a space of nature, tranquility and contemplation — a breath of air and a space to think in the middle of a city racked by stress and stimuli. In 1909, when Monet was proposing the project, he wrote "Nerves strained by work would relax in its presence, following the restful example of it's stagnant waters, and for he who would live in it, this room would offer a refuge for peaceful meditation in the midst of a flowering aquarium." Two vestibules and eight panels comprise the whole, the panels depicting time passing from sunrise till sunset.

When you first step into the Water Lily room, your eye may sweep the field of blue that is the wall. You may notice the colors first — the deep purples, the range of greens and blues, the shades of rose. Then a small dab of white will catch your eye, and your gaze will dance from one lily to the next, skimming the blues of the water, gracing the greens of the reflection, fluttering along with the sunlight on the water's surface. You may choose to sit in the middle of the room and let the work swallow you whole. Or you may choose to walk around the room, your feet moving along with passages of color and light. You may stay a long time, you may take a few deep breaths and move to another exhibit. You may think of water lilies when you close your eyes. You may wonder if sky and water and plants and light are more than the disparate elements we make them out to be, are instead a harmonic of blues.

In any case, the flowering aquarium will be there for you next time you need it.

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