Paris/Musee d´Orsay/Arc de Triumph
We made it to Paris for the second time on the night of July 5th, and arranged on a borrowed cell phone to meet up with Shane´s friends at the Church of the Sacred Heart.  We got there before his friends did, but the church sits on top of a hill, so the magnificent view of the city gave us patience.  That, and the fact that we ourselves are liable to be in Sweden when we´re supposed to be in France.  Paris was stretched out in front of us, covered with the gentle amber glow of streetlamps, in a way we didn´t see on our first visit.  The city is densely packed with buildings, but since none of them are particularly tall, they don´t block the view of the buildings behind them.  With just a little elevation, like on a hilltop, one can see great distances, as if on top of a tall building.  

We admired the city on the steps of the church until Mike, Greg, Sarah, Sarah, and Jeanie showed up and greeted us enthusiastically and passed us their wine.  When the wine ran low, we bought more.  Drinking and looking at scenery has lost some of its thrill over the course of a month, from frequent repetition, but its popularity is at least somewhat based on merit.  Paris was looking quite fetching, and people from the other group had the enthusiasm for this activity that we had in the beginning, 4 or 5 weeks back.

The Musee dÓrsay the next day had the impressionist paintings that I searched the Louvre in vain for when we were in Paris before.  I don´t and probably can´t look at paintings and describe them with ärt¨ words.    When I look, I´m seeking emotional impact, and I can only really describe with any success what a painting makes me feel.  Few paintings in the Louvre, regardless of their quality or importance, had any effect on me, but there are many paintings and artists in the Musee dÓrsay that speak to me (and by speaking, give me something to say back).  

I just jotted some notes there of what I wanted to remember:

1)  I have a love/hate relationship with the rooms in art museums with the fancy coffee tables and chairs.  I guess it´s supposed to be decorative art and show the style of the time.  I hate them, actually, in every sense of the word.  But I love that I can skip them and go on to the next room, with actual art in it, without feeling like I´m missing anything.  Otherwise, I´m pretty obsessive about trying to see everything and it´s exhausting.  I love having rooms I can skip without remorse.

2)
Toulouse-Lautrec:  grotesqueness of culture, fashion
Whistler:  loved his mother.
Monet:  painting the same object in different light shows what´s important:  namely, light.  His paintings, however complicated, give off one, pure feeling.
Degas:  voyeurism.  Objects of paintings are concerned with something else, sometimes something small while the viewer is concerned with the objects
Manet:  a favorite.  Sense of humor.  Paintings so detailed and realistic and honest they´re shocking
Renoir:  faces, social interactions, what people think of themselves
Van Gogh:  how imagination can be triggered by sense.  Precise rendering of fantasy.

We had a group of 11 people for dinner on the 6th when you throw in another of Shane´s friends, Chris, and Sarah´s brother, Dan.  We all took note of the milestone, but not at exactly the same time because there´s some considerable delay in communicating from one end of the table to the other.  And the message could have been distorted for all I know after going through so many messengers.  The next day, a good chunk, about half, moved on to Pamplona, Spain, while the 4 of us stayed in Paris.  We had rushed through Paris the first time with the expectation that we would take more time when we came back, but now there was a lot drawing us onward to Pamplona--the Festival de San Fermin was already underway, and our friends had already gone ahead and wanted to run with the bulls with us.  Nevertheless, the super 4 decided to stay at least one day more, and Jeanie, Sarah´s friend who was incredibly flexible and cool about accomodating Sarah´s horde of friends, relatives, and acquaintances, stayed true to her generous nature and put us up for an extra day and some change in her apartment. 

The extra day and change gave us the chance to do some things it would have been a shame to miss.  We went inside Notre Dame and listened and looked around for signs of God in that big empty quiet dim staggering space.  Inside the cathedral, I drifted toward the end of the line to take confession (the shortest line I saw all day) but drifted away finally because I wasn´t up to doing it in French.  I lit a candle, the cost of which was entirely up to the visitor, according to the smaller print on the sign.  The larger print said 5 Euros, but I refuse to feel guilty if my desired donation differs from the suggested one by as much as 100%.

We went to another church, Saint Chapelle, after Notre Dame to see stained glass, and it was everything Mike Mann said it would be and more.  But I think he said it would be ¨more¨ than he could possibly say it would be, so it really was just what he said.  From the outside of Saint Chapelle, the towering panes that make up the walls of the upper chamber appear drab and colorless.  As I was leaving, I could make out the faint outlines of the intricate designs in the glass, but I didn´t notice at all when I looked at the exterior the first time, before I had been inside.  From inside, these windows were absolutely shining.  The colors were kaleidoscopic, and every color was just as bright as the next.  Red, Blue, and Yellow competed for brilliance.  The air was filled with colored light.  Every window told a story in pictures, either a biblical narrative, or church history, or even the story of how the holy relics of the passion that were once stored in this building got here.  The windows were divided into tiny squares intended to be ¨read¨ in order from bottom to top and left to right, but they were difficult to discern, especially the ones near the ceiling. 

And we somehow managed to place ourselves on top of the Arc de Triumph while the sun was setting and casting soft but clear light over all Paris.  We saw the dome of the Church of the Sacred Heart and assessed how its position on the hill had given us our lovely view two nights prior.  We looked far down 12 separate streets radiating outward in straight lines from the Arc, and admired how lush, green trees lined each one.   We saw the other, modern, Arc, to the west, with the sun setting behind it.  Due East, we saw the obelisk.  Closest of all, we saw the Eiffel Tower, its iron smoldering in the warm but dying sunlight.  As I looked at Napoleon in sculpted relief on the front, I was kind of happy someone was arrogant enough to build this.