Crepes, Maxou, and the Louvre

 

Let us be honest, frank and sincere. I'm writing this blog post 3 weeks after this all happened. I remember it all like it was yesterday - literally, it was all yesterday and everything happened in one day. So until I get caught up (which may never happen, given my very erratic access to computers) my posts will be mainly incomplete picdumps (I have 3 different cameras) and small tidbits of information. There will probably never be a complete dictation of this trip, for it has been such a massive and annoying and fabulous undertaking, but one can at least try to record pieces of it.

 France is known for crepes, or so I've heard. Street food here is crepes, the same way street food in Mexico is those little tortillas with the shaved meat, and hot dogs for the US, etc.

I really wanted to like crepes, but I just don't like them. They're bland. I tried a nutella one and a cheese one, and didn't like either.

Another thought: being abroad reminds of you things you never consider: animals don't have a universal language, and a French dog won't respond to English commands. So when the dog at your hosts house thinks it a marvelous idea to nip at your ankles, telling it to get out of your room is woefully ineffective. I had to look up commands in French to get little Maxou (Maxamillion) to leave me alone. It worked!

The first museum I visited in Paris was the Louvre. It's massive. FAR too massive. I wanted to enjoy it. That seems to be a theme of this trip: wanting to have a nice time. It doesn't always work out.

The Louvre had me overwhelmed. I wanted to look around even though I knew I wouldn't get to SEE/appreciate everything. I don't regret going but I do have mixed feelings about it. I couldn't read the plates, so I had no idea what I was looking at. And it was huge and confusing and I had two benadryl because my allergies were acting up, and all I wanted to do was curl up on a bench and sleep instead of looking at 40,000 pieces of art and not knowing what the fuck I was looking at.

I took a few pictures of the Louvre of things that piqued my interest. Above is a small sculpture of a mama bear and her two cubs. (that's my interpretation of it, anyway)

 Small bronze statues.

I was very much moved by this piece; I could almost see her breathing, her fingers moving, and half expected her to get up and move.

My feet are better than yours!

 

Ah, but what can these people be photographing without even admiring?!

... Miss Mona Lisa herself. It was something we simply must see - just to say we've really glimpsed it.

 And like the others, we took a picture from 10 feet away and moved on. Why? It's really nothing to see, especially compared to everything else in the museum. Like this massive 50 foot wide painting on the wall directly opposite it.

The picture does not show how massive it was. It was truly gigantic.

Something I wish to reflect on is this idolatry of Mona Lisa. She's nothing brilliant. The work of art itself is nothing special. Yes, it's nice -- a lot of art is. And yes, it's iconic -- to what end? What does Mona Lisa even represent?

Nothing, as far as I can tell. Supposedly, it's her smile, blah blah. So she has a face, get on with it.

But that's my take on it.

And to finish this post, two very confusing paintings I saw in the Louvre: