You & I Part 2

detail, Musee du Louvre, 2012

Unfortunately, in the flurry of tourists, I didn’t get the names of these paintings.  I was stunned by the detail involved and unlike everyone else I wanted to look at the paintings that WEREN’T La Jaconde.  I get it, she’s smirking but she wasn’t the most interesting woman in there.  There were far more haunting and interesting faces inside the world’s most famous museum.  There were stories of faith & religion, love & lust, stories of faces made of fruit, the crucifixion of Christ, the debasing of women, the flogging of traitors, the likeness of goddesses, young girls, prostitutes and mothers. There are stories of battle, triumph, defeat, anguish, terror.  There are artifacts from a time in which only the art survived.  As I wander around the labyrinth that is the Louvre, a palace of man’s greatest feat, I am engrossed in almost everything I look at.  And La Jaconde is still there, its just her smile means something different to me now.