INVISIBLE MAPS

We were going to Paris to get away.  Or at least I was.  I’d been working on a book that was vaguely about tigers for the past eight months and I wanted, for a couple weeks anyway, to forget about those solitary beasts.  I want to be footloose, to roam.  To just take in Paris as I saw fit. 

I lived in Paris many years ago with a mother and her son, Jean-Michele.  Jean-Michele and I lost track of one another over many years.  Then about a decade ago Larry and I were going to Paris, a place where he’d never been, and I decided on a whim to see if I could find Jean-Michele’s number and give him a call.  To my surprise his number was in the phone book so I picked up the phone and called.  It had been perhaps thirty years since we’d last spoken, but I just said his name, “Jean-Michele?”  And, without hesitating, he said, “Marie?”

We saw him and his Algerian wife, Karima, twice on that trip and have seen them many times since.  In fact part of the reason we go to Paris as much as we do is to see Jean-Michele and Karima.  This June was no exception.  We’d done a house swap for two weeks and we had only just arrived.  There was a book I was looking for and we saw Jean-Michele for a drink and he said that there was a very good bookstore at the Place de San Suplice.  “And while you are there, you should look in the church.  There are two very good Delacroix frescoes.”

In all honesty I can’t say that I’d ever given Delacroix much thought.  But on a cold and rainy afternoon we stopped in the church and there on the wall were two amazing frescoes, including one with an incredible angel and another with a terrified horse.  We saw for a long time, gazing at them, before moving on.  We bought the book I wanted and went home.

The next day was Sunday, another rainy day, and a friend had recommended the Jewish museum.  He said that they had a very good exhibit on Moroccan Jews there.  I wasn’t sure what I expected and, while I didn’t want to be thinking about my tiger book, a portion of it was set in North Africa (that part has nothing to do with tigers).  So we set off early in the morning and went to the museum.  It was a little like getting into a fortress with all the security but once inside we saw that the exhibit of Moroccan Jews began with some paintings and sketchbook entries of Delacroix.  He had gone to North Africa in search of the exotic and found it in these Moroccan Jews.

I found myself spending a great deal of time with the Delacroix.  Here is a page from my journal in which I incorporate a postcard of an image from his sketchbook with my own painting beyond the borders of the card in my journal.  I call this entry:  Delacroix et Moi.