The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [85]
Repeatedly, an invisible thread pulled me to the Louvre, to the bottom of the stairs where I’d stare up at the goddess of Victory leaning forward on the prow of her ship, the wind plastering her garments against her body. She presented her self to the world so sincerely; I longed to emulate her.
The statue was unearthed in fragments and brought to Paris in the 1860s. Reassembly continued over the next twenty years. More recently, in 1950, her right hand and the tip of her ring finger were discovered on Samothrace, and the rest of this finger and a thumb were found forgotten in a dusty drawer inside a museum in Vienna, Austria. These no-longer-missing pieces rest inside a glass case near her podium.
I walked. My breath, cloudy puffs in the icy air. In the frosty Luxembourg Gardens, the statues of Balzac and Delacroix were unflustered by the weather. The Panthéon cradled in its chilling crypt the long dead heroes of La Belle France. Hurried footsteps slapped the sidewalks as the cold turned bitter.
Uncover what you long for and you will discover who you are.
I peered into a little café where glasses clinked and voices hummed. When the door opened, an aroma of exotic coffee and buttery croissants wafted into the street. I looked in at the people. Their faces…there was something in their faces that reminded me of Winged Victory. Something that challenged me.
A young student wearing round glasses, a scarf slung around his neck, puzzled over something his friend was saying. His forehead scrunched and his eyes darted as his brain twisted and turned. Here was a relentless thinker who didn’t pretend to know but was comfortable just contemplating.
An old woman with white hair and coral lipstick sat alone and meticulously sipped from a tiny white cup; I could see her inner poise, elegance, and utter lack of pretention. She just sat there quietly, comfortable in her own skin. As I looked through the window I knew that the expression on each face revealed the true spirit inside with the same honesty I’d noticed in Winged Victory’s pose.
My own face wore a smile that suddenly felt very heavy. It was not part of my essence, it was ballast. Slowly, I let go the mask. My brow straightened, my eyes relaxed, my face melted into the serious expression that reflected my own spirit. The muscles in my face felt reassembled into a no-longer-missing me.
We learn by going where we have to go; we arrive when we find ourselves on the road walking toward us.
During the next ten days, the self of the preschool photo emerged right there on the streets of Paris. I welcomed her home bit by bit. I shed heavy layers of wide-toothed smiles and let the quiet observer emerge, watching, pondering, daydreaming. I mulled over questions rather than eagerly spilling forth answers. I let myself sit quietly, unsmiling, and sip a glass of scarlet Bordeaux. And for the first time that I could remember since the age of four, I was myself with the world. The truth of this was as close as the victorious vein pulsing in my neck.
In sacred travel, every experience is uncanny. No encounter is without meaning.
As my Parisian pilgrimage progressed, the people I encountered showed me exactly how I could be. In a tiny upstairs nook with books crammed in every crevice, a group of reflective young writers recited prose that revealed their cherished wishes and buried heartaches. Michèle, an artist who had carefully cultivated her observer’s eye, shared her personal and creative secrets with me; we felt our spirits kindle. A shy Irish poet spoke his thoughts with a quiet confidence inside his lyrical accent. None wore a false mask of frivolity, and when I was with them I didn’t either.
The challenge is to learn how to carry over the quality of the journey into your everyday life.
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