Over Paris
I board a packed, hot TGV from Strasbourg to Paris Gare de l’Est. It’s a close connection from Colmar, so close that I run along the side of the train as it begins to move and hop into it just in time. Quite the romantic start for the last rail journey of the trip.
In two hours, I’m in Paris and decide to walk the aptly named Boulevard de Strasbourg because it goes right past Théâtre Antoine. Thanks to a program on France 2, I learned about a play happening there and they even showed a video of one of the scenes. It drew me in right away.
The first part of the walk feels dicey. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle with the sense of shadiness all around and I begin scanning to avoid potential trouble. I’ve become accustomed to the general safety of France and it didn’t even occur to me that the area around Gare de l’Est might be one of those dangerous neighborhoods that did exist. My standard defense is to walk so quickly no one has time to even think about messing with me. It’s gray and there’s a bit of rainy mist as I bullet straight to the door of Théâtre Antoine. It’s open.
The little lobby has such velvety elegance that I almost jump at the contrast. Behind a ticket booth there’s a young man waiting in hope of arrivals such as mine. He doesn’t even mind my terrible accent, interacts easily with me in French, and soon I have a balcony ticket for the show at nine that night!
There’s plenty of time to walk to the hotel across the river in my favorite part of Paris, check-in, get settled, and have dinner on the way back to the theatre before the show. I find a little café along Boulevard de Strasbourg and have an omelet and wine for dinner.
From outside Théâtre Antoine, there are three sections of painted glass windows labelled Comedie, Musique, Drame. In the center, under Musique, there is a round, lighted marquee with the words Théâtre Antoine. Inside, it is richly ornate with gold and burgundy colors and many beautiful stairs. I find my seat in the balcony and enjoy the cupola ceiling, the fancy curtained stage, and the rounded red seats in three levels of balconies.
The play involves just three actors in three acts. Father, mother, and son. Pourvu qu’il soit heureux. As long as he is happy. Isn’t that the truth for most parents.
Pourvu qu’il soit heureux is about an open-minded couple who find their ideals challenged when they arrive at their own doorstep. The trouble begins when a photograph in a magazine shows their son in a compromising situation with a man. They flip-flop between being supportive, outraged, and even hurt. The mother’s very genuine concern that there will be no continuation of family, no grandchildren, really rings true and is well acted by Fanny Cottençon. The first and second acts are in the parents’ bedroom, but the stage is altered between the two acts so that it is viewed from a different perspective, which gives the set an opportunity to be a thematic device. The acting is terrific with great comic timing and the audience laughs often. The play is a comedy, but in the end, tragedy brings the three together to remind them what really matters.
From this experience, I learn that French theatre is subtle, intelligent, compassionate, and the French people like to clap together in musical rhythm rather than the usual cacophony of applause.
Once again, it is in a theater that I have the feeling I’ve somehow gone behind the curtain of French culture. And there’s the sense that it will be so difficult to return to the other side. I don’t belong either way. I suppose any place that becomes familiar becomes home.
The next day, my last in Paris, is so gray. I find l’Atelier des Lumières where there is a light show of Gustav Klimt’s works. I’ve always liked his golden, stylized art and one of the guests at the party in Villefranche-sur-mer suggested that I see the show if it was still running.
It’s a new idea cropping up around the world. People step into a large space to become completely immersed in the art works projected all around, above, in front, behind, under, and even through. You are in the art. It’s an intriguing idea that is difficult to understand unless you experience it, so I go.
There is much waiting in lines outside of the building and the uniformed doorkeepers make a big display of trying a variety of line routing ideas that border on comic. En fin, we are ushered in like cattle to a grand room. For a split second, I’m afraid the showers are going to be turned on. Then, it goes completely dark and light travels through every space in the colors and shapes of Gustav Klimt. Everywhere. It is an overwhelming feeling to be inside the art.
Music accompanies the display and suddenly a music begins that I last heard twenty years ago and thought I would never hear again.
In the sensory overload, I can do nothing but weep.
Lost. Lost time. Lost opportunities. Lost music.
It is the song of a man about to die, the song of the boats carrying his body to sea, or so it was in a favorite French film I watched when I was young.
It always comes back to the music. An die Musik. In so many gray hours when life constricts me, music kindles my heart to a warmer love, a better world.
As I listen to the song that I lost, hearing again such beauty after decades, I’m so thankful to music for making the terrible thing of living not just bearable but beautiful.
At the end of the show, there are credits and I scan them for the title of the lost music. I was sure Schumann wrote it, but I was wrong. Mahler. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. From his Rückert Lieder.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Poem by Friedrich Rückert; Set to Music by Gustav Mahler
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!
Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.
Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!
Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!
I am lost to the world
English Translation by Richard Stokes
I am lost to the world
With which I used to waste much time;
It has for so long known nothing of me,
It may well believe that I am dead.
Nor am I at all concerned
If it should think that I am dead.
Nor can I deny it,
For truly I am dead to the world.
I am dead to the world’s tumult
And rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love, in my song!
And for the rest of my time in Paris, I can’t stop hearing this beautiful song.
The last place to visit is Sacre Coeur: the sacred heart of my life’s journey. Today, there’s a new layer. It’s possible to go up 300 winding steep little steps to the top of the dome. I didn’t know it before and this time I make the climb.
It’s been thirty years since my first arrival at Sacre Coeur, guided there by the shifty Michel.
And five years since the man I thought was my soulmate was sleeping a few streets away while I visited the domed cathedral on the mount of the martyr at daybreak, discovering that the golden heart of Jesus had been there all along and I just hadn’t seen it when I was young. Sacre Coeur is part of my learning how perspective shifts, nothing ever remains just as it was, that change is a constant in life. Sacre Coeur teaches me that the key relationship is not between me and some man I love, but here it all strips bare to the core of me and God.
I think of Petrarch who also loved Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and was a tourist, traveling around back in the 1300s in search of manuscripts and beauty. He had the audacity to make the effort to climb a mountain simply for the beauty of it, which must have seemed like so much idle foolishness to the farmers nearby. At the top, he happened to open Augustine’s Confessions at just this point: “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.” He was quiet on the walk back down the mountain with his brother, thinking about the waste of the past ten years, the folly of his earthly love for Laure. Petrarch wrote in a letter, “I was abashed, and…angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain….I thought in silence of the lack of good counsel in us mortals, who neglect what is noblest in ourselves, scatter our energies in all directions, and waste ourselves in a vain show, because we look about us for what is to be found only within.”
Thinking about Petrarch who lived so very long ago and who stood looking out over a vast landscape not very far away from where I stand now nearly seven hundred years later, I think about how easy it is to worship created things, natural wonders, man-made monuments, and even people. Is travel a form of earth worship? I suppose it is.
And sometimes I’m looking for a home when I travel and I can see that so many others have looked too and not found one. We’re by nature peripatetic wanderers because it turns out there is no home. Earth is not our home. We are but strangers here.
And so, wanderers, we are charged with making something of our lives. I’m not sure I agree with Petrarch’s conclusion. Looking within can be very isolating and even self-absorbed. Looking outward is vital to community and progress. Maybe it’s the kind of looking outward. Casting about scattering our energies and worshipping the beautiful things of the earth might even be a form of looking in. What does it do to help anyone? I suppose that is the key question. What can I do to help someone?
The question forms so easily, yet it’s not simple. In seeking to help others, I’ve often done so much more harm than good. The very worst thing, I think, is when you pour your love and compassion into something and it creates problems. It has to be one of the most painful things there is, knowing that you are responsible for someone else’s grief. No amount of good intent ever truly covers for that kind of mistake.
Unfortunately, it has left me skittish, hesitant, and even fearful. I often feel paralyzed. Who am I to think that I could help anyone? What do I have to give?
There are two statues straddling the sacred heart of Paris. I’d believed that one of them was the valiant Saint Michel, imagining him doing battle with the dark forces for my sake. But I was wrong. It is Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc. She lived such a tiny life. She was a child when she took a stand for her country in a way that looked completely insane. And yet, crazy or not, in the end, she made a positive difference. She fought for what was right and didn’t back down from her personal integrity and principles, even in the face of death. And, only nineteen years old, she was executed for it. She can’t have known what her legacy would be. Perhaps, locked in that cell in Rouen, she wondered if she’d thrown her life away, hadn’t really helped the French cause, and worst of all, disappointed God. And yet, we know her risk and fight mattered.
In situations of conflict or stress, the fight or flight instinct pops up. We deal with this all the time. When emotions become too much, we find ourselves longing to either flee or do battle. Which one we tend toward likely depends on how well we deal with confrontation. People who prefer peace will tend to flee.
For some reason, my whole life I’ve been fleeing to Paris. It’s the first thing I think of when things get rough. Imagining flying to Paris has gotten me through difficult situations, even if I don’t go.
And now, I wonder about the value of pressing myself to stay and fight when I feel the desire to flee. What have I fought for? I certainly haven’t fought for my own life. I’ve fled it. I’m not sure I know how to fight for a life that will enable me to have something to give. Perhaps there is a value in the fight itself and the faith that something good comes from what we do not see.
I stand looking out over the city of Paris. The only monument easy to find is la Tour Eiffel and the sun is setting just to the right of it. If I peer and squint, I can find the Panthéon and, by association, the great lady, Notre Dame de Paris.
Over it all,
Over the disappointments,
The feeling of being alone,
The tricks of men,
The search for a Jesus sometimes difficult to find,
With Paris at sunset stretched all around,
In the sting of the wind and the cold air.
Living alone in the heaven and love that is song,
Whether I succeed or not,
I will continue to fight for a valuable life.
