Day 20: Day at the Museum

Listening to: "Morning Glow" from Pippin

My life is CRAZY.

But let me calm down. From the beginning...

Class at the Louvre! Art History class AT THE LOUVRE! I can say it very casually, like, "Oh, yeah, I totally go to the Louvre all the time to look at Renaissance painters and the oldest pieces of ancient artwork." But really, I was freaking out! DC has its privileges, and going to the Smithsonian to study is one of them. But I've never actually had a class in a museum, so this was definitely a first for me.

Coming in from the Palais Royale Metro stop, all I could think was, Is this Grand Central Station? Because walking in is like walking into Grand Central. There were shops all around me, restaurants above, and people milling about. As I advanced further down the hall, I came to an upside-down glass pyramid like the one on the outside. Except I was down below, and I could see the sides of the outside building above me.

I had gotten there early, and so I wandered around looking for the vaguely defined "group entrance." In a stroke of luck, while I was attempting to explain my situation to a worker in very terrible French, my professor came up to me. She instructed me to meet the rest of the group at two o'clock at the entrance for Richelieu, where all the ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Persian art was housed. In my excitement, I arrived early. The guards seemed surprised that I didn't have a coat. Psh. I'm from New England. I used the coat check.

Anyway, it was a frenzied day of note-taking, but not out of frustration. There was just so much information I wanted to know, wanted to remember. We first looked at a Mesopotamian stele, or a slab of limestone that depicted a war victory. It was even double-sided. There were about four pieces total of this giant slab, and they were strategically placed so you could imagine that they were part of a gravestone-shaped stone. I mean... How on earth did they figure it out? Archaeologists, man.

I felt like the cliché kid in the candy store. My eyes were bulging out of my head, I was grinning like a combination of the Mona Lisa, Cheshire Cat, and Joker. I may have looked slightly insane. I kept scurrying along, occasionally pausing to stand dumbfounded at all the artwork before me. Gawking is for tourists, they say. Well, too damn bad. If you're not gawking at the incredible history before you, then you need to get your head examined. It needs to be appreciated and awed at. 

When we came to the Egyptian statues of pharaohs, my Cheshire Cat smile grew wider and wider, especially when our professor started talking about Akhenaten. I've read way too much about him, and my smile was so large and enigmatic that my professor allowed me to blab about potential genetic disorders, exaggerated propaganda, and why King Tut is only famous because his tomb was extremely well-hidden. I could see the other kids rolling their eyes, but I didn't care. My facts were oozing out of me, and I wanted everyone to know because they make me excited. They make me excited about history and about life in general. I want to know everything. I want more information.

When we reached the Persian wing, I felt an enormous sense of pride. It's ridiculous to most of you, but I feel more in touch with my Persian side (that is nonexistent biologically) than my Chinese-ness. I wished I had known my great-grandfather so he could tell me more about this art, about King Darius, about the temples with the half-horse, half-bull animals on the columns. It meant so much to me, to feel connected to a person I never knew but really wish I had the chance to meet. I feel like I was discovering more about him.

We found ourselves in the bowels of the Louvre: the crypt. It was slightly scary, but the crowds and the good lighting made it less so. Class ended there, and I could hear sighs of relief. I wanted to smack them all. Strong reaction, but for goodness sake, you're in the Louvre! You're seeing things some people never get to see! And you're counting down the time till class is OVER? 

Why do people grow accustomed to beauty? This wasn't the time to be cool or jaded. So I left the group, as my new Art History student badge will get me into lots of museums for free. When I returned to the beginning to trace my way through, the guard who commented on my lack of coat pulled me over and asked me out. Ahhhhhh. I guess my enthusiasm for the art was mistaken.

I was acting like a child. I climbed up the stairs with abandon, swinging my arms and huffing so I felt impressed when I reached the top. I circled back around all the sights we covered during class, stopping to take better pictures and to examine pieces that I had to leave behind earlier. When I reached the end, I decided "what the hell" and headed up the stairs to see all the opulent reconstructions of French palaces as well as diamond-studded snuffboxes. I just kept walking, walking, walking. 

I heard more noise, and a simple sign with just the Mona Lisa and an arrow made me realize that she was ahead. I hadn't thought about seeing the Mona Lisa, but I decided to go look. Well, the Italian painting wing is a labyrinth. I could not find it, despite all the helpful signs. I was also getting sidetracked by other artists I remembered reporting on in our infamous "Time Travel" video for World Survey class in high school. So I got lost. But it was okay because I was lost in the Louvre. I saw more and more art, and finally I reached the ancient African art wing. I peeked into the Asian section but was disappointed to see that it focused solely on Indonesian and Filipino sculptures. So, sorry, Matt, but no Chinese art. :(

And now getting lost was problematic. How the heck was I supposed to make my way back? Every turn I made just brought me to a new section. The Art Gallery at the Smithsonian is the same way. Luckily, the guards are obviously trained to spot lost tourists, because many came to my aid without me having to say two words. I mean, I did find my way back, conveniently exiting through a wing that was not near the guard who randomly asked me out. 

My stomach was growling. Ooo, there was lots of food. On my way out, I had some Italian to-go pasta. While I was eating, a man sat down across from me. A few awkward French exchanges told me that he was an Iranian professor of philosophy. So we started talking about that. We talked about it for a loooooong time. That's why I love going to places seule: I always meet interesting individuals. I worked on my French with him, and he worked on his English with me. There was a lot of defining words and throwing synonyms out there, but it was an engaging conversation. (See, I'm not completely surly, despite what some people seem to think. But really, it's only people my age. So unfair.)

What an incredible day! So amazing. So unexpected. Some more highlights:

1. Okay, so we were walking by in a line down this narrow hallway. Coming in the opposite direction was a younger school group, and one boy looked at me and said, "Ni hao!" My mouth popped open, and I couldn't help but feel slightly affronted. Even surrounded by completely white Americans and an English-speaking professor, people still think I don't understand a lick of English.

2. And then it happened again! This time it was an older man. At least he had the decency to ask me if I was Korean. Nope. Japanese? Nope. Chinese? Yes. Oh. Ni hao. I wanted to feel offended again, but it's much harder to feel offended when someone is politely prejudiced. So I said "goodbye" to him in Chinese and headed off.

3. I saw a lot of selfie sticks. Like, a lot. Three. That's three too many. Whatever happened to the good old fashioned method of interacting with another human?

4. When I was walking through the entrance, I wasn't talking about run-of-the-mill stores. I saw Apple, Lacoste, Pandora, several expensive-looking clothing stores, and lots of bookstores. 

5. A brief jonesing through the map solved many questions. The Tuileries? Those are the gardens of the Louvre. There are four floors, with the main floor being underground. The map makes it look doable to walk through, but trust me, that's like thinking you can walk from the Capital to the White House in 10 minutes. It's just not going to happen. And things are pretty much divided by time period, and then each time period features artwork in chronological order, for the most part. There are audio tours available on Nintendo DS's (no, I'm not kidding), and the place is open till 9:30 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. But it's closed completely on Tuesdays. Yeah, it's a mystery to me too.

6. They never told us that Egyptians didn't just use hieroglyphics! They developed text that looks more like writing today... How is it we make it out of elementary school without cool knowledge like this?

7. Mesopotamians used cuneiform. NOT hieroglyphics. If another Art History student makes that mistake, I'm going to go all Hammurabi on them.

I always moan about the Smithsonians closing early, but being there while it grew dark made me apprehensive: I was reminded of the unfortunate almost-locked-inside-the-Natural-History-Museum night, which would have not been like Ben Stiller Night at the Museum fun but scary because we were surrounded by animal skeletons. So I'm not really ready to repeat that again.

I guess my pictures say more than I can... I'm just posting the ones I really like here. I apologize, I only had my iPod camera. I didn't want my big camera clunking around while I was taking notes. I still go to school, after all.

There's only one way to describe what I felt today: mysterium et tremendum fascinans. 

It's the Latin phrase for seeing something so awe-inspiring, so incredible that you feel... You don't even know how to describe it. The song "Morning Glow" captures that wondrous feeling the best for me. That's why I sing it shrilly for everyone to hear. I wanted to perform it on the Metro, but I suspected that the Parisians wouldn't have appreciated it.

By the way, Ligne 1 of the Metro is high class. It has special opening glass doors. There's also a stop named after Franklin D. Roosevelt. I wonder why? Now that I think of it, I saw an Ella Fitzgerald stop on the Tramway line. So strange... Anyway, automatic opening train car doors are really posh because we plebeians on Line 12 have to pull a lever to open the doors ourselves. How barbarous.

Oh: iconoclasm. That's the destruction of famous, ancient artifacts in the name of protest or revolution. The Egyptians did it to Akhenaten because he tried to change too many things. Chinese students did it during the Communist Revolution because they were idiots who couldn't appreciate their history. (It still makes me very angry.) How I feel about this is like Professor Langdon in Angels and Demons:

Not Tom Hanks: "Are you anti-Catholic, professor?"

Tom Hanks: "No. I'm anti-vandalism."