Rewriting Paris

Working on a story, I needed to have a character tick off a few well-known works of art, and I wanted the paintings to be from different periods and movements. Although I'm pretty familiar with -- well, dozens of artists and their works, I began browsing the Internet for inspiration.

As I went through several of the most famous artists -- Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Monet, Picasso -- I looked at their work with interest, but mostly, just searching for the right name.

Then I glanced at one particular Van Gogh painting, "L'eglise d'Auvers-sur-Oise," and at the credit following the painting's name: "Musee d'Orsay, Paris."

Even before I read the credit, of course I knew I'd seen that painting in person. I took A.'s picture in front of it! (No flash, of course.) But actually reading "Musee d'Orsay, Paris" made something sink in that I don't think had fully hit me before. Much as I've thought back on my trip to Paris -- relived the visit to Giverney, tromping the old Rive Gauche cobblestone streets, muttering "Pardon, excusez-moi" as I squeezed through packed cafes -- looking at this photo of a painting on the Internet was the first time I froze and thought, "Oh my gosh. I really went there."

Before, I would breathlessly say, yes, I visited the place I've always seen in many of my favorite movies (Charade, Moulin Rouge!, Casablanca) and read about in some of my favorite books (A Moveable Feast, Tender Is the Night, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, set just outside Paris). But it took seeing on the Internet a painting I saw in person to shake me into the realization that, sightseeing aside, going on that trip was a pretty significant event for me as a writer.

Before going, I'd always just kind of ignored the fact that I'd never been anywhere outside the country. Since I was little, I had traveled up and down the east coast of the USA, hitting almost every state this side of the Mississippi. I knew I was more than qualified to set stories in any of those places.

But I wanted to write about things a little bit more exotic than rural Pennsylvania or the outskirts of Atlanta. How could I really feel I was doing my job as a writer if I only described what I thought a place would be like, based on photographs from National Geographic, or other writers' descriptions? If I'd never set foot in one of the world's busiest cities (hey, I don't remember New York from when I was eight months old, so it doesn't count)? If I'd never been any place where the primary language wasn't English?

Although I have only left the country once, and I have a very long list of places I'd like to visit, just this afternoon it finally dawned on me that going to Paris accomplished a little bit of my goal.
Not only did I get to experience some of the best museums in the world, and get a tempting little taste of life in the City of Light, I got a jolt of confidence from my time there, too. I feel somehow more qualified to be a Real Writer. I've eaten at the same restaurants where some of the greatest writers ate. I've visited the cemetary where some of the greatest writers are buried. I've walked the same gardens where some of the greatest writers strolled.

My ultimate goal for my Paris experience is to turn it into a manuscript of poems. Poems, even more than photographs, are what I believe really capture a moment. I believe I had some moments worth capturing, as I suddenly realized -- thank you, Van Gogh -- all over again today.

And I want to relive those moments over and over and over again.