Certain moments possess an amount of incomprehensible serendipity. For a night like this to have come when it did for me, on the very last night of my first trip into the land of “Par-EE,” is especially ironic. For, as a trip is coming to a close, people have a remarkable ability to do everything they can to try to force the Hollywood ending out of its waning moments. Naturally, as is true for any issue being pursued too zealously, this leads more often than not to an awkward, phony, and uptight finale that more closely resembles a camping trip from an episode of Leave it to Beaver. Nonetheless, as I sat there in the Jean Monet FIAP, (don’t ask me what FIAP stands for, I still don’t know) the night before I was destined for twenty-two hours of travelling, I unknowingly was preparing myself for a night of eerie coincidence that would all pull together to create a night that any number of months of itinerary-planning could not have come close to matching in its pristine beauty.
Like any night in which serendipity plays its part, a whole lot of lead-ins had to collaborate, falling together entirely at the right moments. Without any single one of a handful of visits just days to hours before, my final night in Paris would not have had the same alluring ambiance. Four days prior, we made our visit to the first museum of the trip, a place in which I had no idea what to expect, the Musée D’Orsay. It was in this art haven that I got my crash course education of the art period I came to know as Impressionism. From Degas to Cezanne to Pissarro to the king, Monet, I saw hundreds of the best works of Impressionism. The only shame was we only had ninety minutes in this wondrous place. The most amazing part of the entire experience is that for twenty years up until this point, I cared very little about art. I thought it was neat, certainly, but I would not have been able to tell you the difference between Rafael and Manet. As my friend who majors in art said, that is a fairly awful notion. Yet, as I walked out the doors of ‘D’Orsay,’ I felt more enthusiastic, involved, and interested in the fine arts, especially paintings, especially paintings by the Impressionists, especially paintings by the impressionist Claude Monet, especially paintings by the impressionist Claude Monet of his gardens. The most striking aspect of these paintings was how, instead of using long, traditional strokes to form a coherent picture, Monet made up his paintings of entirely short, brisk, quick strokes, yet the pictures were more coherent to me than anything I had seen before.
Thankfully, that was not the last encounter I would have with my newest inspiration, Claude Monet. The afternoon before my fateful last night, we were going on what would be another fascinating trip to Giverny, the town in which Monet painted. Such were the only details I had, but I was excited ‘out of my brains’ nonetheless. My first surprise of this trip was the fact that we had a tour guide for the bus ride and our trip through Giverny. This came as a surprise, of course, because I was told that due to an utterly obnoxious and indolent travel agency, we did not have the tour guides to any of our stops. So, to our surprise, an English speaking French woman hopped on the bus with us.
Little did I know that my crash course in Impressionism was not over. Part II commenced on this bus ride as this woman, a graduate of Art History from Le Louvre’s education system, spewed out tidbit after tidbit of Monet, the period of Impressionism in general, art at large, and everything in between. She taught me about Monet’s gardens. How he was in love with Japanese art so he modeled his first after a Japanese garden. How he had Normand influences so his other was a Normandy garden. How, at the time, the Impressionists were rejected and had to hold their own art shows. How Monet was a poor man and spent nearly all his money, admirably, on his gardens. How, here being what I would later find to be the most important detail, that Monet concentrated on sun light. He was interested in the way sunlight affected the landscape, more specifically, how the sunlight changed the way the landscape reflected on the water, even more specifically, how his garden reflected off his Japanese Lily Pond during the different periods of the day. Without all of these small, intricate details, my night later in that day would never have made the perfect sense it wound up making.
After an hour and a half of this encyclopedia disguised as a woman’s lectures throughout the bus ride, we arrived at Giverny to finally see the real thing. Just like seeing an authentic painting is an experience no print can match, seeing the actual place at Monet painted could not have been matched by even his very own work. Smelling his flowers, seeing the ebb and flow of his pond, feeling the air that he felt brushing against my skin, looking out at the incomparable green, rolling hills out somewhere in the nature of his village– these details can only be understood when truly lived. Seeing the sunset on the lilies the way Monet did only made the beauty of his paintings richer than at any other moment before. What I had seen at D’Orsay a few days earlier, what I had heard just a few moments earlier, what I had pondered in between and shortly thereafter, all worked together. Without one part, the next could never have been nearly as blissful. I could not have known this yet, but what I was experiencing walking through Monet’s pride and glory was only a tiny foreshadowing of what later that night would be that same feeling of luck being on my side, infinitely multiplied. Still, I left Giverny, back on the bus, with a feeling that somehow, someway, a Beaver Cleaver was not going to intrude on my last night in Paris.
Finally, back to the awkward last night of goodbyes, a few of us decided seeing Paris at night was the only option upon which we should embark as our last hurrah, seemingly an obvious choice at the time. It’s also ironic that only a few of us were going, for during the first 6 night of the trip, it was an impossible task at best not to be surrounded by a dozen familiar faces. Again, this moment would not have been possible if not for the stroke of luck of being there only with the right people in which this experience could be shared. So, as we hopped on the metro toward our final destination, Trocodero, we could see the Eiffel Tower from the windows. I could see it was lit up for sure but it was just a dim cast of archaic gold, perhaps the gilded tone that dominated each and every room of Versailles. Whatever the color, it was not that beautiful, shiny, illuminated mass the pictures let me to believe. Still, the metro chugged on and we proceeded toward what was acclaimed to be the absolute best view of the fabled Tower.
We finally arrived at Trocodero and headed toward the platform upon which we would be looking out on the city. Slowly we made our way toward where all of the people were gathered to see the ‘light show.’ I wasn’t quite sure what the light show was, seeing how the only thing I had seen a few minutes before was reminiscent of fading florescent lights. Yet, just as the Eiffel Tower finally came into our horizon of perspective, something happened. I heard a click and out of nowhere, the entire Tower lit up. What seemed like one thousand individual fourth of July sparkles being ignited at the same time lit up the moment we stopped to settle in for our outlook on Paris. We did not arrive a second too soon nor a second too late. If we had taken a moment longer, the effect would never have been the same. So, as everybody was enjoying their moment, I proceeded to the edge of the platform. I noticed a fountain stretching out underneath the tower. From this fountain, I could see each individual light of the Eiffel Tower reflecting off of the water in this fountain. Each individual light provided the effect of a short, brisk, and quick stroke. The only thought that was going through my mind is that Monet would have had a field day sitting on the edge of Trocodero looking out in this view that embodied everything he strove to encapsulate in his paintings.
Five minutes later the lights turned off. Had we taken one metro later, we would never have seen the light show. Had anything, anything at all gone differently in the past four days, my final night would have been as forced, regimented, and unfulfilled as so many before me. Alas, I did live what I lived and the night was coming to a close. With one final goodbye, the few of us that witnessed this beauteous occasion sat there in La Closerie Des Lilas. I heard one friend with another quoting Casablanca– “We’ll always have Paris,” she said. In my mind I quietly knew she was right and thus was the close of the last chapter of my first trip abroad.
