Why am I here two and one half full hours before my train back to London and why why why am I making steady progress on draining this jar?
Because I can't handle being inside the Musee D'Orsay (henceforth the "MD") for more than forty minutes, and I can't handle the fact that I can't handle the MD.
My first MD attempt occurred the day after my 26th birthday. I had met my parents in Paris, and we all went together for a little family culture. I was expecting to enjoy it - I was expecting to outlast my parents, actually, and have an aggressively romantic, slapped-across-the-face-with-beauty-such-that-you-are-drunk-(in a pleasant, not sloppy way)-on-its-memory-for-at-least-another-two-hours experience. NOT SO. At the time, though, it was easy enough to blame the sudden anxiety, light but alarming sweating and increasingly insistent "bolt" feeling in my abdomen to a combination of post-birthday-hang-over and some vestigial teenage rebellion revolting against the idea of going to a MUSEUM with my PARENTS.
As an aside (that maybe should have been the intro), everyfreakingbody loves the MD. You probably do, too, and if you haven't been, I can tell you that if you do go, you probably will love it. It's one of the capital "t" capital "d" things To Do here in Paris. Rodin, Van Gogh, Impressionists, Art Nouveau, big clock, beautiful glass ceiling, culture culture culture. Beauty as we all should know and recognize and appreciate it.
[Before I go on, let me make one thing clear. This is not a post designed to show you (all 13 of you, whom I already know) that I am somehow different and special with a difficult and complicated and unique and better aesthetic sense. I fucking WANT to want to kill hours at the mfing MD. Maybe even days.]
And, being a both a people pleaser and someone who is V. (capitalized for emphasis, not due to iphone usage like every other error in this post) susceptible to "you should do this"-type messaging, and with another three years under my belt, I took my non-post-festive-hung-over self right on over there today, with a plan to spend at least four hours there.
I lasted all of twenty minutes.
The MD makes me genuinely agitated. Like, anxious, racing pulse, sweaty palm, get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here agitated. RUN AWAY agitated. And run I did, but only after trying my best to calm down and just LOOK AT THE ART. It didn't work.
By the time I gave myself permission to leave, I was in the depths of a (very self-involved) depression and bout of self-loathing so deep it was all I could do to force myself to stop by the gift shop to purchase a book on the MD for my mother, shamefully thinking I could study it on the way home so as to be able to discuss its contents convincingly with her.
In addition to being seriously agitated, I was well, truly and seriously bummed when I left the mfing MD, questioning everything from my capacity to appreciate beauty to my capacity to enter into meaningful relationships to my capacity to even question this kind of shit since I don't have the capacity to appreciate something so universally pleasing (similar to my "Disney Depression" - for another time).
So distressed was I that I think I accidentally skipped out on most of my shockingly low lunch tab, clearing my mental fog of despair for a few moments, blocks away, to realize that I had probably definitely misread one v. significant digit.
THAT is how I find myself, after a long and calming city bus ride, elbows deep in red something, contemplating my total failure at understanding and/or enjoying art. On the upside, I am now drunk enough to enjoy the closest thing to a dine-and-dash I'll ever be able to pull off.