{"id":3630,"date":"2015-11-17T13:40:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T21:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2015-11-17T14:25:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T22:25:16","slug":"november-17-2015-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/november-17-2015-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"November 17, 2015 – Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>
\"Ellen<\/a>

Ellen took this of me on our last night in Paris.<\/p><\/div>\n

Listen to this post:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/20151117-Post.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n

First a note: This took me a long<\/em> time to write. It felt like there wasn\u2019t anything else<\/em> I could write about today and<\/em> be real. And yet, I feared saying something, in some way, that would offend someone. If I did, I ask for your forgiveness. We are all finding our way through.<\/p>\n

Friday I was with my mom in her office after the Friday group had all left, when I got a text from Carla, our bookkeeper: \u201cturn on CNN.\u201d There\u2019s no TV in the office, so we went to CNN.com and saw Paris \u2013 the staggering violence being unleashed in this city, that holds such a special place for so many of us. I just came back from there – a month and a day earlier. We never were actually in any of the locations that were attacked \u2013 we stayed and visited to the south and west, but still<\/em>. My loved ones told me they\u2019re so glad this didn\u2019t happen when we were there. I am too. Seeing how the violence in Paris has struck people all over the world, being so close to the epicenter, the impact would have hit us so much harder. It would have been an entirely<\/em> different experience, and we\u2019d likely be traumatized by having been right<\/em> there. (As well, it could have bonded us in a way that we weren\u2019t otherwise.) And<\/em> we would have come home.<\/p>\n

My thoughts and heart are and were with those directly impacted \u2013 those who were killed, injured, and witnessed it directly \u2013 and their loved ones. And I\u2019m thinking about my friends \u2013 among millions of Parisians – who live<\/em> there, for whom this is not just a special place, but home<\/em> \u2013 where they sleep, and get groceries, and go to work and take their kids to school. I went to a dinner party my last Saturday there at my friend\u2019s apartment, that was walking-distance to one of the places that was hit. For them, there\u2019s no other place to go home to. One of the women on our trip has an adult granddaughter living there, who went right<\/em> by one of the restaurants on a moped and was a block away, entering her friend\u2019s apartment when the gunfire started.<\/p>\n

Through my horror and grief, I\u2019ve found myself wondering about all of it. What came up first was \u201cwhy Paris?\u201d Of all the big cities in the west that could have been attacked, why Paris – again? It could be that the French are part of the coalition that is fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but there are literally dozens of countries who are supporting military intervention against them. It could be that France is, as I read, \u201cfiercely secular\u201d (see this cartoon<\/a> in response to #prayforparis) and the French society is founded upon free thought and free speech \u2013 some of which has been anti-Muslim. The attackers are religious fanatics whose point-of-view, maybe even their existence, is threatened by all of this. I\u2019m certain there are other, more complex factors involved \u2013 France\u2019s treatment of its Muslim immigrant population may be one. I\u2019ve read of more than one young man who became \u201cradicalized\u201d in a French prison. I\u2019m a meaning-seeker, and I have to wonder if there isn\u2019t something – unconscious or not – about the forces of darkness attacking the \u201cCity of Light.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also wondering \u201cwho are they and what are they after?\u201d I read about their leader<\/a> and his life-long, seemingly single-minded dedication to reciting the Koran. But also I read that it was the chaos in the region, that has allowed men with his bleak, doomsday vision to rise to power. A related question I\u2019m asking is \u201cwhy are young people (mostly men) \u2013 even those from the west – joining with this vision?\u201d Is it that there will always be some people who are disposed to align with darkness? What has a young, strong, capable man strap explosives to the middle of his body, to willingly end his own life? What kind of meaning-seeking compels him to do this?<\/p>\n

Then I ask \u201cwhere\u2019s my place? Where do I put all of this?\u201d Even though I love Paris and have people I\u2019m very fond of who live there, I strangely don\u2019t feel personally attacked. I\u2019m touched by those who have reached out to me this weekend, because of my relationship with Paris. On Saturday morning, Joe and I came up to Tahoe \u2013 to the cabin we stayed in\u00a0this summer. We\u2019re here with no intention, other than to rest and just hang out together with our puppy dog.<\/p>\n

\"puzzle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I love to do jigsaw puzzles. I am a total addict, so I don\u2019t let myself do them very often, or I\u2019d not have a life! But letting myself get completely consumed by a puzzle, is just what this trip is about. When I was packing up to go, I found a puzzle of a Monet painting of water lilies, Joe\u2019s sister had given me one Christmas that I\u2019d never opened. The painting is in the Muse\u00e9 Marmottan Monet – I just saw this painting last month. Oh, perfect. While it snowed all day on Sunday, I matched colors and shapes to put his painting back together. I was intimate with the brush strokes, he laid down on this canvas a hundred years ago. In some way, even if it\u2019s so obvious it\u2019s a clich\u00e9 – this was the right meditation as I asked these questions. Not a drab color on any of the 1,000 pieces \u2013 pinks, blues, greens and whites \u2013 of the lily pond in the garden he created in Giverny \u2013 we were just there too.<\/p>\n

\""Yesterday's<\/a>

“Yesterday’s hike in the snow”<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday we woke to sun, shining on the snow covering everything. It was boot-deep as we took a hike along one of the paths we take in the summer. It was all new, to see this very familiar place covered with white. I kept exclaiming how beautiful it all was – so much that Joe was rolling his eyes at me. It was very quiet too as the soft snow absorbs sound. Except for one man and his dog coming back just as we were heading out, we saw no one. Bo took to the snow like he\u2019d been in it all his life. He romped, and ran, and sniffed and had a big party. It was all so peaceful.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve not watched the news or followed what\u2019s going on online. Joe has and has given me some of the highlights. Violence has been pledged in retaliation. We have to stop them. It\u2019s not over, there will be more. None of this is particularly helpful to me. I\u2019m finding myself more contemplative and gaining perspective. Violence happens every day, many days in far greater magnitude. We can\u2019t imagine ourselves in a caf\u00e9 in Beirut or Baghdad or even Tel Aviv. But we can if the caf\u00e9 is in Paris.\u00a0Even if we\u2019ve not been there, we\u2019ve dreamed of it. So, we feel the impact. Besides that it was Paris<\/em>, a place that captures the world\u2019s imagination<\/a> like maybe\u00a0no other. It\u2019s a symbol of our way of life – much like New York. The terrorists get this.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to hike again this morning \u2013 it\u2019s another spectacularly beautiful day. And then I want to paint. Roses. A painting that I started two or three years ago that has been waiting to be finished. I\u2019d just finished one of the grapes and hadn\u2019t sorted out what to paint next. So, I\u2019ll work on this one. It\u2019s what I do. I paint.<\/p>\n

\"paintings\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We live in a world that contains violence. And I\u2019m very grateful for those who are called to step up, risking everything, to prevent and mitigate it as much as possible. And I hope in doing so, that the violence isn\u2019t perpetuated. And I believe our world contains even more grace and beauty and love, than it does violence. It is evident \u2013 otherwise the forces of darkness would have taken over and life would not exist. Most of the response to the violence in Paris is filled with the forces of life, of light \u2013 connecting us to each other. Most of us are drawn to the light, to perpetuate life. It feels like I keep saying this \u2013 but I\u2019m finding myself looking for the capacity to hold it all – the bloodshed and the snowfall, the violence and the beauty, the outrage and the compassion, fear and love.<\/p>\n

With my love for all of you and for all our world,<\/p>\n

Cara<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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