Falling for
Passion
It was my third day in Paris that I found myself in one
of the great chambers of the Louvre. Raphael, Da Vinci,
and Rembrandt had put me in a state of positive delirium
I was very content to stay in. Paintings larger than my
living room covered the scarlet walls that were themselves
framed with gold, elegantly moulded columns. Even if the
former palace was stripped of all its artwork, I would
have been happy to walk in the footsteps of knights and
their kings.
As I was doing just that, a man caught my eye. I had already
grown used to the initially shocking sight of fellow tourists
taking pictures, and even video, of the priceless statues
and canvases, so the fact that he was doing the latter
did not astonish me. Something else did. He never took
his eyes away from his camera. One eye fixed tightly against
the view-finder, the other shut, he walked through the
room using the camera as his guide. When I left, after
savoring each painting, his eyes hadn’t moved.
Several hours later, I was leaning against my hotel room’s
own little black wrought-iron balcony, pondering why the
man with the camera had so bothered me. As I watched the
light fade from the sky, I realized what troubled me the
most was his seeming indifference to all the beauty around
him; he had seemed perfectly content to gaze at some of
the greatest beauty in the world through a black and white
view-finder.
In this golden age of technology, perhaps we have forgotten
how to truly see--how to see the world, and how to see
ourselves. If we go through life looking through a view-finder,
how can we expect to find our view? Couldn’t he
see this? Or was I the one at fault?
I have always been a person of great passion. I worked
for nearly two years doing some of the most menial labor
known to man to earn the money for Paris, all in the name
of passion. As a grocery store courtesy clerk, I wiped
up eggs from the linoleum, swept up broken beer bottles
in the parking lot at night, and answered rather embarrassing
questions about Preparation-H for a customer over the
phone. Sometimes people, like the man with the camera,
cause me to doubt my fervor, but without it, I wouldn’t
have been standing on that balcony. My passion led me
to Paris, where I not only fulfilled a dream, but fell
more in love with the world.
I wish I could tell you my visit to the Louvre ended in
a manner of great elegance and sophistication. No, my
ending was slightly less so. I fell down the stairs. My
friends told me later I had been looking up at the exquisite
ceiling when it happened. I must have ignored my footing
and taken a wrong step, they said. Or had I? I fell down
the stairs, but I did so in appreciation of the beauty
that is the Louvre. I may have bruised myself in my haze
of passion, but at least I was able to see.
Smiling to myself as La Tour Eiffel began to sparkle,
I realized that I had been right all along.
