News from France this week broadcast bizarre images of Paris residents navigating boats down flooded streets. Tourists who would normally be shopping, were now sopping. Due to torrential rains, the Seine river, which snakes through and around the capital, had crested at 20 feet above normal, shutting down metro lines and closing many tourist sites. The City of Lights, now had become a city of plight, as many visitors were forced to rethink their itineraries, cancel tickets and have a literal damper put on their dream vacations.
In an unprecedented move, curators at the Louvre had to move to higher ground 150,000 artifacts and works of art that had been stored in the basement of the famous landmark in order to save them from potential damage. Who knew that a museum that already boasted 380,000 individual cultural treasures, all accessible to the public, had so much more hidden below the surface? It took a disaster to bring what was hidden out of its unexplored recesses.
Have you ever noticed how a crisis tends to bring to the surface of our lives things that we maybe did not realize were there? We usually keep the best looking and most interesting part of us
I turned 51 this year and a recent deluge precipitated some murky swirling deep waters. And let’s just say I was keeping some old bones (I prefer to not use the word skeletons) where I knew my emotional elevator rarely went. Before I knew it, though, old and unpleasant musty things from my private stockpile of memories and experiences were being hauled up from sub-terrain of my past. It was unanticipated and uncomfortable. These historical articles had not been sanitized or polished and were definitely now unprotected.
But the truth is, it was their previously undetected hiding place that actually made me more vulnerable. Those unsightly relics are now getting a proper cleaning and actually look pretty acceptable next to the old exhibit’s standard fare. There’s now a bit less lying in the underbelly of my life that makes me liable and I’ve found that what I considered too ugly or damaged is actually worth more than I thought when seen in a better light. In the Museum of Me, I’ve found it’s just best to get everything out into view while remembering a couple of things. One, don’t expect that everyone will be able to accurately appraise every article’s real value; and two, every artifact from our past together makes up a rare and unique collection that has to be seen in its entirety to be truly treasured.
