Learning to be still

"Faire une nuit blanche": pull an all nighter.

Every year, Paris pulls a nuit blanche. Art exhibits are everywhere, music is everywhere, and crazy light shows are abundant. People stay out until 7am, after which it's time to quietly slip into bed.

I wasn't there, at least not past midnight or so. I can't decide if I should have, or could have, but the point is that I was exhausted and chose instead to return back home and go to bed. I had been planning on going to a ball thing sunday evening, today, with "the club internationale des jeunes à Paris", but sent an e-mail making my own excuses.

I will be the first to accept the fact that I am an old woman when it comes to going to bed early, but why didn't I just stay out? Live a little, be young? I could make all sorts of excuses, but I won't. I didn't, because I couldn't. I wanted to sleep, I wanted to disappear for the day and have absolutely nowhere to be, nothing to do.

I did stay out for a bit -- having a lovely dinner and then taking a long stroll to the Centre Pompidou, which as far as modern bullshit claiming to be art goes, is really up there at the top. I apologize for insulting anyone's artistic sensibilities, but I saw a lot of interesting things in there and not a lot I considered to be art -- but that's the point, I suppose, that everything and anything can be art so long as you call it that. But for me, the best part of the building was the escalator staircases on the outside of the building, pulling you irresistibly up into the Paris night, and at the top, surrounded by a glass bubble, you can look out into the night, watch the Eiffel Tower sparkling, see the Cathedrale de Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre. It's stunning.

But after we were done making fun of the pieces inside, we headed out  --- everyone headed for Trocadero, but I headed home, clambering into bed.

I didn't wake up until 11:30, staying in bed until I was good and ready to get up. I knew I wanted to go somewhere, but waited until a good idea came to me, and a little past one headed out. I stopped at a boulangerie to buy a goodie and a baguette, then turned my steps to the Cimetière de Montparnesse.

I had been there once before, and I like cemeteries usually. I went in the back way I guess, because there wasn't that many people -- the cemetery has a lot of famous people buried there and attracts a fair amount of tourists. But there wasn't many where I came in, and I walked slowly, listening to the wind rustling the leaves, just beginning to turn and fall. It was a very mild day and fairly sunny, and with the inherent calm that always comes in cemeteries, I found myself utterly at peace.

This is what I was looking for today, I thought -- this past week felt too much like home, rushing, stressing, thinking, --- doing. I am so tired of doing. I "do" very well. The other day at dinner, someone said to me, "you're doing so much -- trying to find a job and getting your dance classes and all that. I don't think I could do that."

I didn't know how to explain to her that "doing" is easy for me. I'm used to doing. It's natural.

But what I was looking for -- a lesson from the dead, who, I've heard, are quite good at this -- was how to stop -- how to not do -- how to rest. To stand in the face of the world, with all of its insanities and terror, to look at all of the black and white and grey and color color color -- and not do.

(Isn't that fatalistic?) The demons in my head are never satisfied with stillness. (To change the world, mustn't one do?) 

I let the dead answer for me. One can only do from a point of stillness, or the doing only blends into all the other 'things' we humans do. 

I sat on a bench for a long time and looked out at the graves, and quietly buried the stress, uncertainty, and various other things I've been carrying with me. Rest in peace, I thought. There are a lot of things I need to let go of -- some things I may find again, some things I may fight for again, but for right now, for these few short months I have for myself -- I buried them.

There are some things that are perfect.

Like that.

If you'd like to see pictures the day, click here.

À bientot.