October 13, 2015 – All the Light We Cannot See

Sunset from Pont Neuf our last night as a group in Paris

Listen to this post:

When I left you it was last Monday, I was writing last week’s post in bed in the apartment in Paris, where I stayed for a week and a half. A Monday later and I’m writing in a plane somewhere over the ice sheets at the top of our planet, coming home. I wrote that I’d hoped I’d be sick for only one day, but I’m still coughing. This isn’t the story I’d hoped to be writing you after my/our first “Pilgrimage in Paris.”

Denying I was as sick as I was, I spent Tuesday out and about with some of the group and then ended up in bed again all day Wednesday. I even ended up going to the doctor Wednesday evening. I was wheezing so badly that the effort of a one-block walk to the taxi, meant I had to wait a few seconds to catch my breath, in order to tell the driver the doctor’s office address. The kind French doctor prescribed an antibiotic, an oral steroid to calm the inflammation in my lungs and an inhaler. Oy! Getting this sick was so not in the plan.

I awoke to the idea of this Pilgrimage a year ago and have been holding it with such a rosy glow in my imagination ever since. The disappointment that this is how it turned out has brought me to tears. I envisioned a group of artists – or people with artist’s souls – experiencing Paris separately and together, meeting up over a meal each day to share inspirations and discoveries. I imagined that I’d participate in the experiences and that I’d be leader and guide – not just travel-guide, language-guide, but the holder of the deeper experience. As it went, my being taken out of commission meant that each person rose to find their way without me – giving them a more direct experience – finding their own way. But my having spent the better part of three days, towards the start of our trip, out of the group dynamic meant that the group cohesion I’d imagined didn’t really happen.

On top of this, there were other challenges. We had concert tickets at Sainte Chapelle on Monday night. Though I’d been in bed all day, I was determined not to miss it. Just as I was getting up to get ready, I got a call that the key for one of the other apartments wouldn’t turn the lock. Unable to get ahold of the apartment owner, I called a locksmith myself to get it open. He told me it was full of dust – the stairwell was in the process of being re-painted. All this happened within the nick of time to get a taxi in the rain and make the concert before it started. Then, one other person (so sorry, my dear Ellen) ended up getting the bug too, and her apartment mates were called upon to tend to her needs as well. Then, heading home on Saturday, four of the pilgrims had one of those flight-days-from-hell. They were supposed to take off at 10:00am, but with one glitch after the next, the flight ended up being cancelled. It wasn’t until well into the evening, that they had new reservations to get home and a voucher for a hotel to sleep in.

Despite all of this, I heard from just about everyone that it was a good trip. Either, they saw all that they came to see, or they were filled with inspirations to paint from for a long while, or they made new dear friends, or they found an expanded sense of themselves, in their capacity to communicate with people without a common language, or that they gained the freedom by learning to take the Paris Metro, or that they felt the triumph of having given themselves the trip in the first place.

And of course mixed in with all of this was Paris: Notre Dame, that gorgeous concert in Sainte Chappelle, the islands, the Seine, the museums chocked full of treasures of art (we sought out mostly the Impressionists’ art), the cafes, the parks, the Marais, Montmartre, the gorgeous Mosque right in the neighborhood we stayed in and the buttery breakfast pastries! Plus two day trips – to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his last 70 days and to Giverny – a pilgrimage in itself.

Giverny

As for me, I have an even deeper relationship with Paris – a more real one. For some un-explained reason, my capacity to speak French is as good or better than it has ever been. I hired and dealt with a locksmith, saw a doctor and a pharmacist, sent numerous text messages to apartment coordinators, shuttle drivers – all in French! The big test was a little dinner party I went to on Saturday night – 4 native French speakers and me. The vast majority of the conversation was in French and I followed a good 80% of it. This is huge! It’s been 19 years since I came home from my six month stay in Paris. Since 1999, I’ve been back for only a week or so every few years. By all rights, I should be very rusty – I hardly ever speak French at home – really, almost never – and there it was, all there for me. No stumbling, no hesitation – it’s not perfect, but I am completely functional. I was blown away by how easy it was for me. I’ve also not forgotten one bit of the map of the streets that I learned when I lived here. I know my away around like it’s home. And then there was being sick in Paris – in some odd way, it had me feel like being there was less a dreamy fairytale, than it was a place for me where real life happens too.

I interloped over the barriers to take pictures of this dahlia in Monet’s garden! My French-Canadian accomplice took this of me.

I knew that the trip would be transformational – travel always is, but I resisted the kind of transformation that this one held for me. I shared what was going on with my friend Vicki. Here’s what she said:

“Not what you’d hoped for, a different kind of transformation, deeper, more personal. Ride the darkness and disappointment and look for ‘all the light we cannot see.’ It’s there but not what your conscious mind had planned.

Roll with the fear, roll in the darkness–it will not hurt you, and then you will heal… Let this experience transform you by letting go of your expectations of wanting the present to be like the past. The past was marvelous, but that was then, this is now. Who are you now? Where is the light? There’s gold in them thar hills, so you may as well embrace what is and let yourself be sick in Paris.”

The ironic thing is that I’m listening to that exact audiobook right now – still only about half way through – “All the Light We Cannot See.” The Paris part of it takes place right in the neighborhood where I lived 20 years ago and where we stayed this past week, very near the Jardin de Plantes. It’s not WWII and I’m not a blind girl, but that Vicki used that phrase, that my mind is wrapped in that story right now, and that all this is centered on that very spot on the planet – is stunning synchronicity to me.’

The last night of our Pilgrimage, everyone had the experience of seeing Paris at night from a Bateau Mouche on the river – the Seine. As beautiful as Paris is in the day, it is magnificent at night. From Notre Dame west to the Eiffel Tower, the contrast of the darkness surrounding these amazing landmarks that captivate the world’s imagination, makes them all the more astonishingly beautiful.

Pilgrimages are faith journeys. They are not a promise for a blissful walk in a flower garden (though, those walks were part of ours!). I’m certain that there are more gifts that will come of this trip. I’m going to keep asking that “all the light we cannot – yet – see” continue to be revealed, in order to illuminate our way forward.
With my gratitude to the Paris Pilgrims, to Paris and to you for holding us all while we were there.

Love,

Cara